How close is human-level AI?

“I look at how complex the training recipes are and how manual AI training and development is today, and there's no way this is going to take us all the way to AGI just by itself.”

How the view has changed. He told TIME in 2023 he had been "quite bullish about AGI" when he pitched Google in 2010, but that scaling transformers alone would not get there; by February 2026 he was saying human-level AI remained many decades away.

“If you just kind of eyeball the rate at which these capabilities are increasing, it does make you think that we'll get there by 2026 or 2027.”

How the view has changed. In "Machines of Loving Grace" (October 2024) he wrote that powerful AI "could come as early as 2026, though there are also ways it could take much longer." In February 2026 he told Dwarkesh Patel "we are near the end of the exponential," and in June 2026 wrote that "If these scaling laws continue for only a year or two longer," a country of geniuses is likely.

“Superintelligence can be built within years, not decades or centuries.”

“over the next five to 10 years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we'll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence”

How the view has changed. At Davos in January 2026 he said current systems were "nowhere near" AGI and gave roughly even odds within the decade; at Stanford in May 2026 he pointed to 2030, a shift Gary Marcus criticised as inconsistent.

“AGI is a term that famously lacks a precise meaning, and certainly does not refer to any particular imminent technology.”

How the view has changed. In 2023 she described the extinction-risk movement as a "clown car" competing for policymakers' attention; by 2025 she and Hanna were arguing that AGI promises were being used to justify blocking state AI regulation.

“I frankly don't even know what AGI means. Like people say you know it when you see it, I guess I haven't seen it.”

“We won’t get to AGI in 2026 (or 7).”

How the view has changed. In 2026 he criticized Demis Hassabis's shift toward a 2030 date and Jensen Huang's declaration that AGI had arrived, while saying autoformalization and perhaps reliable coding might be within reach.

“A reasonable bet is sometime between five and 20 years.”

How the view has changed. In his December 2024 Nobel interview he gave a 50 percent chance within five to twenty years, then corrected himself to "between four and 19 years." By September 2026 he was telling reporters that "a lot of the researchers are saying only a few years."

“I think like 5 to 20.”

How the view has changed. In July 2023 he and Leike wrote that superintelligence "seems far off now" but "could arrive this decade."

“every single test that you can possibly imagine, you make that list of tests and put it in front of the computer science industry, and I'm guessing in five years time, we'll do well on every single one.”

“We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity.”

How the view has changed. In 2023 he preferred the term "artificial capable intelligence" and wrote little about superintelligence; the November 2025 statement coincided with Microsoft winning the right to pursue AGI independently of OpenAI.

“It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I'm confident we'll get there.”

How the view has changed. In June 2025 he wrote that "2026 will likely see the arrival of systems that can figure out novel insights"; in August 2025 he told CNBC AGI was "not a super useful term."

“undefined systems like 'AGI' cannot be appropriately tested for safety”

“I said that reaching Human-Level AI "will take several years if not a decade."”

How the view has changed. At Brown in 2026 he said there was "no question" machines would eventually surpass humans in all domains where humans are intelligent, but that it would take "a while" and be "almost certainly much harder than we think".

“There is a significant probability that superhuman AI is just a few years away, outpacing our ability to comprehend the various risks and establish sufficient guardrails.”

How the view has changed. In an August 2023 essay he wrote that his estimate had gone from "decades to centuries" to "5 to 20 years with 90% confidence" after seeing what ChatGPT could do.