In a recent interview for CNBC’s debut podcast, The Tech Download (February 2026), Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis revealed that tech veterans with 20–30 years of experience are describing the current AI era as “the most intense environment they’ve ever seen.”
According to Hassabis, these industry veterans who have lived through the birth of the internet, the mobile revolution, and the cloud era believe the current pace of AI development is unprecedented in the history of technology.
Key Insights from Hassabis on the “Intense” AI Environment
Hassabis characterized the landscape as a “ferocious competitive environment.” Google is currently locked in a high-stakes race with rivals like OpenAI, Amazon, Anthropic, and Perplexity.
He noted that he and Google CEO Sundar Pichai speak “pretty much every day” to adjust roadmaps and strategic plans in real-time. This highlights how the speed of innovation is forcing even trillion-dollar companies to pivot on a daily basis.
Hassabis described DeepMind as the “engine room” for Google and Alphabet. By merging various AI units, Google has centralized its efforts to ensure that AI models (like Gemini) are integrated into “every product and every surface area” across the company.
While the environment is intense, Hassabis remains grounded. He frequently refers to current AI as having “jagged intelligence” meaning models can solve complex PhD-level math but may still fail at basic high-school logic.
Why This Shift Is Different
Hassabis has consistently compared this moment to the Industrial Revolution, with one critical distinction:
“It’s going to be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution and maybe 10 times faster.”
He argues that while past revolutions focused on augmenting human muscle, this one is about augmenting (and sometimes replacing) human thought, compressing a century’s worth of societal change into a single decade.
