Demis Hassabis says it’s up to you whether AI sharpens your mind or gradually dulls it.
In an interview with entrepreneur Varun Maya on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday, the Google DeepMind CEO said AI is like the internet. People can use it to learn all sorts of topics, or in ways that “degrade” their thinking.
“In the case of AI, if you use it in a lazy way, it reduces abilities such as critical thinking,” he said. “But it’s your personal responsibility. No one can help you with that.”
He added that people need to get smarter and use these technologies in ways that enhance rather than dull their thinking.
Hassabis Co-founder of DeepMind Acquired by Google in 2010; acquired by Google in 2014; In 2023, it merged with Google Brain to form Google DeepMind, the lab behind tools like Gemini and Nano Banana. CEO and DeepMind colleague John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on protein structure prediction.
As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, debate over its risks and benefits is intensifying, with multiple technology leaders warning of the dangers of over-reliance on AI tools.
Earlier this week, tech billionaire Mark Cuban said there are two types of people who use AI.
“In general, there are two types of LLM users: those who use LLM to learn everything, and those who use LLM because they don’t need to learn anything,” Cuban said of large language models in a post on X on Tuesday.
Mr. Cuban previously said that AI models cannot provide all the answers and are like “stupid” but “scientists who remember everything.”
The CEO of French AI research institute Mistral said at a conference in June that the risk of using AI for everything is that humans won’t try.
“The biggest risk of AI is not that it will outsmart us or become uncontrollable, but that it will make us too comfortable, too dependent, and ultimately too lazy to think and act for ourselves,” said Arthur Mensch.
