Google's AI chief: We're Living in the “Foothills of the Singularity” - Week In Tech
TechStuff
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4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
What does it mean to be at the “foothills of the singularity”? That’s how DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis ended his speech at Google I/O, prompting questions and scratched heads. Oz and Reed Albergotti (Semafor) attempt to dissect the meaning behind Hassabis’s confounding statement. They also discuss why so many commencement speakers are getting booed by college graduates after bringing up AI, and what it means for SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI to all be heading towards an IPO.
Then, Oz sits down with David Webster, Head of UX at Google Labs, for a deeper look at the products Google unveiled at their annual developer conference of the year.
Additional Reading:
- DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis on what Google AI products say about ‘singularity’ | Semafor
- A Guide to Commencement | Semafor
- SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI’s Sprint to Go Public Defines the AI Boom’s Big Day - WSJ
- Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed | Strait Times IG
- Subscriber Q&A: Live @ Google I/O - by Alex Heath - Sources
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:16.0 | Readabregotti, are we living in the foothills of the singularity? |
| 0:20.0 | You know, so we're at Google I.O. |
| 0:22.0 | And it's like two hours of, you know, and now we're adding AI to this. And now this is getting better and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you're like, okay, cool. Like, you know, there's a million different things Google's doing. It's very impressive and overwhelming. And then Demis Asabas closes it out. He's like, and by the way, you know, we're in the foothills of the singularity. |
| 0:41.2 | I don't know. overwhelming. And then Demis Asabas closes it out. And he's like, and by the way, we're in the |
| 0:38.6 | foothills of the singularity. I don't exactly know what that means. I'm like, well, I'm going to get |
| 0:44.1 | some time with him later. I'm going to ask him like what he exactly means about that. I don't know if |
| 0:48.5 | I have a better idea after talking to him, like a more specific idea, because I think he's been |
| 0:55.8 | very specific about like AGI in five years or 10 years or whatever. And in this case, |
| 1:01.8 | it's like, we're sort of in the realm of this singularity thing, which no one can really define. |
| 1:09.1 | But I think I thought about it. And I was like, you know, it is actually a |
| 1:14.0 | helpful comment in a sense because you can get sort of bogged down in all in the weeds of all |
| 1:19.9 | these different product announcements. And it's like, okay, like yeah, AI is getting better and |
| 1:25.3 | every Google product now is being sort of, you know, tuned or |
| 1:29.6 | enhanced with with everything that DeepMind is, is working on. But actually, there is this like |
| 1:36.8 | North Star for the company, and they are still like behind the scenes. They see, DeepMind, you know, |
| 1:42.5 | sees its goal as getting to this you know this this this place of |
| 1:47.7 | whatever you want to call it the singularity or or aGI asi um you know and and i think i mean it's |
| 1:55.1 | anybody's guess whether whether that will happen whether it's even possible but it is it does |
| 1:59.8 | help to sort of think okay yeah this is, this is like, this is what's, what's really happening behind the scenes. Let's get into it. Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Osvalosh, and this is the Week in Tech. Today, something a little bit different. For the first part of our show, we'll be joined by our regular contributor, Reid Albregotti, |
| 2:17.8 | tech editor for Semaphore to discuss the big headlines you need to know this week. |
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