Hassabis touts AI's climate role in Dublin while warning of agent-driven cyberattacks
Google DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis spoke Wednesday at the International AI Summit in Dublin, outlining AI progress in math and coding and arguing that AI could ultimately help deliver technology to tackle climate change, citing climate and weather modeling, fusion plasma containment, superconductors, batteries and solar materials. He contrasted AI's strength in math, coding, Go and Atari games with physics, chemistry and biology, which he said require real-world loops of creativity, intuition and judgment; AGI, which he had called the "foothills of the singularity" at Google I/O in May, went unmentioned. Per Reuters, Hassabis also called recent cyberattacks launched by AI agents an "early warning," saying damage is limited because systems are not yet strong enough but that the next one to two years could bring a catastrophic incident without more investment in security; Microsoft president Brad Smith called 2026 a wake-up year and urged balanced AI safety laws.
It signals how a leading lab chief is framing the public conversation, shifting from AGI timelines toward concrete science applications and safety governance.