Rowan Cheung May 26, 2026 Demis Hassabis says we’re in the ‘foothills of the singularity’ In this exclusive conversation, I sat down with the Google DeepMind CEO to find out:
Why AGI is coming in 2030, plus or minus a year
How AI will compress drug discovery from 10 years to weeks
Why glasses are the killer app form factor AI was waiting for
What Demis will work on after AGI (and what’s left for human meaning)
Get 5-minute daily updates on the latest AI news: https://www.therundown.ai/subscribe Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:45 What Demis is most excited about at I/O 1:46 Have AGI timelines shifted? 3:30 What’s still missing before AGI 6:50 AI curing every disease 9:19 What diseases get cured first? 10:50 What Demis works on after AGI 11:48 Human meaning after AGI 13:50 The human skills that get more valuable 15:19 What’s underhyped in AI right now
Google AI Overview
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is a theoretical type of AI that can match or exceed human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Unlike current “narrow” AI—which is built for specific jobs—AGI could learn, reason, and apply knowledge across entirely new domains without requiring task-specific training. Wikipedia +2
How it Differs from Current AI
Current AI (Narrow): Excels at specific tasks (e.g., generating code or summarizing texts) but lacks real-world adaptability outside its training. Amazon Web Services (AWS) +1
AGI (General): Possesses versatile “common sense.” It could transfer skills between different situations, solve unfamiliar problems, and self-teach like a human. Amazon Web Services (AWS) +1
Key Characteristics of AGI
Cross-Domain Learning: The ability to understand and connect concepts across unrelated fields (e.g., playing chess, writing a novel, and repairing a faucet). Stanford HAI +1
Autonomy & Agency: The capacity to set its own goals, make long-term plans, and figure out how to accomplish them without constant human guidance. YouTube·Tiff In Tech
Common Sense & Judgment: Adapting to unpredictable, real-world situations seamlessly. IBM
Timeline & Challenges
While major strides in Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic AI have been made, true AGI remains a hypothetical milestone. Researchers debate when it will be achieved and how it will be measured, with ongoing discussions surrounding the safety and societal impact of developing human-level intelligence. Stanford HAI +3
(Note: If you are asking about taxes, AGI stands for Adjusted Gross Income—which is your total gross income for the year minus specific tax deductions.) H&R Block
David Hockney photographed against his work in Paris in 2017. Claire Delfino/Paris Match/Contour/Getty Images
British painter David Hockney, whose vibrant portraits and sun-drenched depictions of the everyday made him one of contemporary art’s most beloved figures, has died at 88.
The artist died “peacefully at home” on Thursday, one month short of his 89th birthday, according to a statement provided to CNN by his longtime publicist Erica Bolton.
Born in Bradford, UK, in 1937, Hockney attended his local art school before studying at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London. Successful from the earliest stages of his career, he soon relocated to Los Angeles, where he would spend much of the 1960s and eventually settle.
While teaching at various US colleges, he established himself as a key figure in the Pop Art movement. Like many of his contemporaries, Hockney injected his work with bright colors and dancing lines. But while the likes of Andy Warhol (who was just nine years his senior) turned their focus to commercialism and consumer society, Hockney appeared more concerned with his immediate surroundings.
David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” on display at London’s Tate Modern in 2023. Belinda Jiao/PA Images/Getty Images
David Hockney at home in Los Angeles, California in 1987. Anthony Barboza/Getty Images
His deeply personal realist style was characterized by self-portraits, still lives and depictions of friends and lovers (and, later, his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie, whom he immortalized in a series of paintings and an accompanying book). Having come out as gay in his early 20s — a time when homosexuality was still outlawed in England — he also explored sexuality through playfully explicit images and almost mundane snapshots of domestic life: men showering or quietly sitting together.
Among his best-known works from this period are a series of light-filled swimming pool paintings that seemed to freeze a moment in time. But his oeuvre was diverse, spanning photography, printmaking and stage design for ballet and opera productions. He went on to produce photocollages in the 1980s, and many of his later — and often more abstract — landscape paintings were also well received.
Hockney held onto much of his own work, and established an eponymous foundation to manage it. Those paintings that did go to market have soared in value in recent years.
A young David Hockney in his Bayswater studio. Francis Goodman/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In 2018, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” fetched $90.3 million to become (if only briefly) the most expensive work by a living artist ever to sell at auction. The next year, his double portrait “Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott” went for $49.5 million at Christie’s, while his 1980 landscape painting “Nichols Canyon” went on to fetch over $41 million.
Yet, Hockney never appeared especially interested in the commercial success of his work. Nor did he reap all the benefits — his record-breaking swimming pool painting was sold by his New York dealer for just $18,000 in 1972. And despite his achievements, he continued working throughout his later years. When CNN visited his California studio in 2017, a then-80-year-old Hockney said he still painted for six or seven hours every day.
“I’m perfectly happy doing this,” he said at the time. “I feel 30 when I’m in the studio, so I come in every day and work, because then I feel 30.”
By this time, Hockney, who was never afraid to experiment with technology, had begun creating art using an iPad. Spending much of the Covid-19 pandemic in Normandy, France, he produced a series of digital renderings of the surrounding countryside that were later printed and exhibited at London’s Royal Academy and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, among others.
David Hockney and Andy Warhol. Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
English artist David Hockney working in a studio, circa 1967. Tony Evans/Timelapse Library Ltd/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
With his mop of blond (then gray) hair, large glasses and, oftentimes, a cigarette in hand, Hockney was one of art’s most recognizable figures. During his lifetime he was the subject of several major retrospectives, including one in 2017 that traveled between Tate Britain, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A statement from Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson praised Hockney for being an “endlessly inventive artist,” who “taught us about the joy of looking, seeing things the rest of us failed to notice — his witty and sharp observations a constant presence in his work and in person.”
He was also among the UK’s most decorated artists, having been invited to join the Royal Academy and, among other honors, awarded the John Moores Painting Prize and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for painting.
David Hockney during a luncheon for Members of the Order of Merit at Buckingham Palace in London in 2022. Aaron Chown/Getty Images
While he famously turned down a knighthood, he went on in 2012 to accept Queen Elizabeth II’s invitation to the Order of Merit, a group of celebrated public figures that is limited to no more than 24 members at any given time. (In true Hockney style, he turned up to one of the Order’s luncheons at Buckingham Palace in a pair of bright yellow Crocs — to the apparent delight of Elizabeth’s successor, King Charles III.)
The King released a statement on Friday expressing his condolences over Hockney’s passing, remembering the artist as “a giant of the world of art and painting, a Yorkshireman through and through, and a dear friend and inspiration to so many.”
He continued, “David was one of life’s true originals; one who wore his genius as lightly as those beloved yellow Crocs of his that helped brighten Palace occasions. I trust they will see him tread safely into the hereafter as we mourn a man whose irrepressible charm, talent and constant innovation will be most sorely missed, but whose dazzling creativity lives on in galleries and museums around the world.”
In Bolton’s statement announcing Hockney’s death, the publicist described him as “one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries.” She added that his “enduring legacy reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humor, his immense generosity and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase, ‘love life.’”
CNN’s Fiona Sinclair Scott contributed to this report.
Immigration to the West has long been soaring, as growing numbers of people flee hunger, poverty, and war. This surge of migrants has taken a toll on the democracies they wish to call home, many of which are struggling to serve even their own citizens. The complex questions that arise in response have become flashpoints for conflict, sometimes escalating into violence.
The following Journal of Democracy essays explore these tensions, with an eye on making democracy work in societies that are becoming more diverse than ever before. Read free for a limited time.
From enhancing physical security to encouraging mutual trust, an inclusive sense of national identity continues to be crucial to the flourishing of modern states.
Majoritarian nationalism is a defining feature of our time. If we are to resist ethnonationalist leaders trying to recast our societies into imagined majorities, we must revise our conception of democracy and the exclusion inherent in majority rule.
Immigration threatens to erode liberalism, as far-right parties and migrant communities with illiberal views gain power. Mass publics have shouldered the blame. But should political elites be held responsible?
Immigration has changed the face of Western Europe. Yet mainstream political parties have largely ignored citizens’ concerns about what immigration means for their societies, leaving them ripe for far-right populists to exploit.
Some liberals attribute the origins of our polarized political era to “identity politics.” But multiculturalism need not provoke majoritarian anxieties — not if national identities can open ways for all citizens to be recognized and heard.
By Tariq Modood
The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Subscribe now for full access to the Journal of Democracy archives.
On Sunday, the same day as President Trump’s 80th birthday, the White House will host UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn. The Onion takes a look at the key facts and figures behind the unprecedented mixed martial arts event.
$1.2 million
Cost of restoring Thomas Jefferson’s original Octagon
5
Drinks before shirtless Pete Hegseth tries to join fight
7
Times mixed martial arts mentioned in Bill of Rights
2
Future Supreme Court justices on fight card
.001%
Likelihood fighter walks out to the theme from Will And Grace
13
Average ring girl age
8
Times Pope Leo has declined to attend
20
Starved lions on hand if things get slow
3
Women
9
Scattered teeth that will be found during next year’s White House Easter Egg Hunt
Translation®– — One of The Prosperos Foundation Classes —–
Saturday & Sunday, July 18-19
Class will run two full days (10:00 am – 5:00 pm Pacific Time)
Presented by Pam Rodolph, H.W., M.
Live on Zoom — attend from anywhere!
Translation® class provides the instruction required for shedding limitation, disorder, and confusion from your world by using this fundamental resource: Straight Thinking in the Abstract. When we judge by appearances, we judge amiss. “That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” as Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote. Learn to see through what seems to be — limitation, anxiety, oppression — to Truth, which lies waiting for your discovery.
In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation. Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.
It is not a Translation workshop, It is not a Translation class. It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.
It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.
Last week our sense testimony was: Not enough love in the world. And our conclusion was: Love is consciousness in infinite supply OR Consciousness is love in infinite supply.
“We together are realizing each other’s liberation once we find the social and political path to spread this collective awareness sufficiently across social space, then the loving world to which we aspire will begin to be born.” [1]
–Peter Gabel
Peter Gabel was an American law academic and associate editor of Tikkun, a bi-monthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society. He wrote a number of articles for the magazine on subjects ranging from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to the creationism/evolution controversy. Wikipedia
Artist’s impression of a primitive ocean on Mars, which some researchers suggested harbored more water than the Arctic Ocean on Earth. (Most of that water was later lost to space.) (Image credit: NASA/GSFC)
Google AI Overview
Recent Mars missions have revealed that the Red Planet contains far more water than previously thought, preserved primarily as underground ice, ancient buried river deltas, and deep subterranean water reservoirs. [1, 2, 3]
Latest Discoveries & News
Underground Oceans: Using seismic data from the NASA InSight lander, scientists identified a massive reservoir of liquid water deep within the fractured rock of the Martian crust. The volume is immense; if released, it would cover the entire planet in an ocean 1 to 2 kilometers deep. However, it resides at depths of 11.5 to 20 kilometers, making it inaccessible with current technology. [1]
Ancient Rivers & Lakes: The NASA Perseverance rover discovered buried remains of an ancient river delta up to 35 meters below the surface of Jezero Crater. This provides some of the deepest and oldest evidence of flowing water on the Martian surface. [1]
Subsurface Groundwater Habitats: Research on ancient sand dunes in Gale Crater indicates that underground water continued to flow long after surface lakes dried up. This suggests that subterranean, sheltered environments may have sustained microbial life for far longer than initially believed. [1]
Current Salty Flows: Scientists continue to monitor locations where super-salty water (brines) may currently flow on the Martian surface. The high salt content lowers the freezing point, allowing the water to exist as a liquid for short periods. [1]
Water & Space Exploration: NASA is actively testing mobile wastewater treatment systems (capable of processing human waste into drinkable water and plant nutrients) in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. [1]
For a look at the data being gathered by NASA’s rovers investigating these ancient, water-carved landscapes:
