Safety vs speed: AGI divide at Davos

Leaders of two of the world's most powerful artificial intelligence labs laid out contrasting visions for the future of the technology — how fast it should be developed and how soon what is known as AGI can be achieved — at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2026, with divergent views over development timelines and the necessity of slowing the pace of innovation.

- Vishal Mathur

CEOs of DeepMind and Anthropic, Demis Hassabis (left) and Dario Amodei, at a talk during the WEF meeting on January 20.

(REUTERS)

During 'The Day After AGI' session, Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, presented divergent views on artificial general intelligence (AGI) schedules, geopolitical risks and societal impacts. The disagreement highlights a significant difference in approach between the developers of Gemini and Claude, two of the market's most capable models.

In contrast to WEF 2025, which was dominated by discussions on the cost-efficiency of Chinese firm DeepSeek's large language models, this year's forum broadened its focus. The conversation shifted from who built the cheapest or fastest model to how the technology will be implemented and its societal risks.

In recent times, industry leaders such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have struck a cautionary note, stating that AI must “do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries” to sustain investment and build supportive infrastructure.

A key portion of this conversation is AGI, or artificial general intelligence, which refers to AI systems capable of performing any intellectual task that a human being can do.

Hassabis acknowledged that the next couple of years would be complicated as the industry navigates geopolitical questions, but pointed to Deep-Mind's AlphaFold and scientific work as evidence of AI solving real-world problems.