Demis Hassabis

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Even the King of England Has His Hesitations About AI

At a private summit at Dumfries House in Scotland on 17 September 2026, King Charles told AI leaders including Jensen Huang and Demis Hassabis that the technology is “both intriguing and deeply concerning” and asked whether we need “sufficient means of control before it is all too late”. We set out his words, the guest list, how the tech leaders replied, the criticism from Scotland, and what the summit can realistically change.

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DeepMind Co-Founder Warns AI Capabilities Must Not Outrun Safety Controls

Google DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg used the launch of the DeepMind Institute on 16 September 2026 to warn that rapidly advancing AI must not outpace its safety controls. The platform shipped five essays on day one, including a technical case for keeping chain-of-thought reasoning readable, an evaluation of eleven economic policies for an AGI labour shock, and a philosophical argument for a new utopianism. Legg also said it is premature to declare AGI achieved, while holding to his 50% by 2028 forecast.

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Demis Hassabis Aligns With Dario Amodei on Pacing Frontier AI Development

Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis said on 12 September 2026 that Dario Amodei’s essay on pacing frontier AI “points towards the right path forward”. We compare the standards body Hassabis proposed in July with Amodei’s three-step plan, trace the day of endorsements, check what Google has actually committed to, and set out the critics’ case.

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Zuckerberg, Musk Make Plea at G20 for More AI Data Centers

At the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill on 1–2 September 2026, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk asked the world’s largest economies to clear the way for more AI data centers. Zuckerberg said Meta cannot find the skilled tradespeople to build them; Musk warned of a significant power shortfall arriving next year and put AI’s upside at $20–30 trillion a year. This article covers what each executive asked for, the Gallup, Emerson and Consumer Reports polling showing Americans turning against data center construction, the 439,000-worker labor gap behind the plea, and what the buildout fight means for businesses buying AI capacity.

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US to Press G20 on Light-Touch AI Regulation: Inside the Carolina Principles

At the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill on 1–2 September 2026, the United States is asking the world’s largest economies to sign the Carolina Principles: a non-binding pact to reserve new AI regulation for genuinely novel issues and to avoid creating new AI regulators. This article sets out what the principles say, who is in the room with Musk, Altman, Huang and Hassabis, why Washington wants the pact now, the counter-arguments from the Hugging Face breach and the UN panel, how it compares with the G20’s own AI record, and what it means for UK and EU businesses.

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Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines Co-Founder Ousted Before Joining OpenAI, Is Now at Google

Barret Zoph announced on 26 August 2026 that he is joining Google DeepMind as vice president of research, working on reinforcement learning and post-training for Gemini. It closes a twenty-two month sequence that took him from OpenAI to co-founding Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati, to a disputed firing on 14 January 2026, to five months leading enterprise business back at OpenAI. This breakdown covers what the new role is and is not, both accounts of the Thinking Machines termination, his 2016-2022 Google Brain record, the 2026 departures that emptied the seat he is filling, where Thinking Machines stands now, and what any organisation buying AI should take from it.

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