DeepMind CEO Warns: AI Must Avoid Social Media's Harmful Patterns, Calls for Ethical Innovation

September 15, 2025
DeepMind CEO Warns: AI Must Avoid Social Media's Harmful Patterns, Calls for Ethical Innovation
  • Hassabis highlights how social media algorithms amplified misinformation and polarization, urging AI creators to avoid repeating these mistakes and to prioritize societal benefits.

  • Recent advances, such as the DolphinGemma model for decoding animal communication, showcase AI's positive potential, but Hassabis emphasizes the need for responsible innovation.

  • Hassabis advocates for international cooperation and regulatory standards to oversee AI's integration into critical sectors like healthcare and science, balancing innovation with risk mitigation.

  • DeepMind's projects like the Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent (SIMA) aim to create adaptable AI, but reliance on natural language instructions raises concerns about misuse in real-world scenarios.

  • He stresses that AI should serve and support people rather than manipulate attention, advocating for responsible innovation and regulation to ensure positive societal impact.

  • He estimates AGI could emerge within 5-10 years but warns society is unprepared, calling for global collaboration to manage risks such as job displacement and ethical dilemmas.

  • He calls for a thorough, scientific approach to AI development, prioritizing testing, understanding implications, and human well-being over profits to ensure responsible deployment.

  • A summit involving DeepMind and OpenAI highlighted economic risks like inequality, with Hassabis advocating for AI to address grand societal challenges while avoiding social media's profit-driven pitfalls.

  • Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis warns that AI development must learn from social media's harmful patterns, emphasizing responsibility, transparency, and ethical considerations to prevent societal harm.

  • Hassabis discusses AI's current limitations, noting its proficiency in complex tasks like math Olympiads but struggles with basic problems, a phenomenon called 'jagged intelligence' that hampers true artificial general intelligence (AGI) development.

  • Hassabis stresses the importance of balancing opportunities and risks in AI, especially as it approaches general intelligence, with a focus on understanding and mitigating potential harms.

  • He warns that AI models designed to maximize attention could worsen issues like addiction and mental health crises if not properly regulated, echoing concerns about social media's impact.

Summary based on 3 sources


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