DeepMind opens Institute to publish essays on AGI safety

Google DeepMind has opened a public essay platform for arguments about artificial general intelligence, publishing four launch pieces and naming three directors. The DeepMind Institute is run by co-founder and Chief AGI Scientist Shane Legg as managing editor, alongside co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis and James Manyika, Google's President of Research, Labs, Technology and Society.

"This is a critical moment to ensure we build AGI safely and its benefits to society far outweigh any risks," the three directors write in the launch essay. They flag cybersecurity, biorisks and the "potential for loss of control in future self-improving systems" among the concerns the venue will host debate on.

Four essays open the platform: "The case for reasoning transparency" by Rohin Shah and Anca Dragan, "Economic policy for AGI" by Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas, "Principles for a new utopianism" by Stephen Cave, and "A framework for frontier AI and the dawning of a new age" by Hassabis. Contributions "should not be read as Google's official view," the institute notes.

According to The Next Web, Legg said he remains comfortable with his 50% forecast for "minimal" AGI by 2028, and called Dario Amodei's proposal to slow (not pause) AI releases "interesting directionally" and "worth considering." The DMI gives that kind of thinking a venue outside a Google product blog.