It’s up to you whether AI makes you sharper or slowly dulls your brain, says Demis Hassabis.
In a Thursday interview with entrepreneur Varun Mayya on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit, the Google DeepMind CEO said that AI is just like the internet. People can use it to learn all kinds of topics, or use it in ways that “degrade” their thinking.
“With AI, if you use it in a lazy way, it will make you worse at critical thinking and so on,” he said. “But that’s down to you as the individual. No one can help you do that.”
He added that people need to be smart and use these technologies in ways that enhance their thinking rather than dull it.
Hassabis cofounded DeepMind in 2010, which Google acquired in 2014. It merged with Google Brain in 2023 to form Google DeepMind, the lab behind tools such as Gemini and Nano Banana. The CEO and a DeepMind coworker, John Jumper, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work on protein structure prediction.
Every time Shubhangi publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Shubhangi and get more of their work as it publishes.
As AI gets incorporated into daily life, debates about its risks and rewards have intensified, with several tech leaders warning about the dangers of an overreliance on AI tools.
Earlier this week, tech billionaire Mark Cuban said that there are two types of people who use AI.
“There are generally 2 types of LLM users, those that use it to learn everything, and those that use it so they don’t have to learn anything,” Cuban said of large language models in an X post on Tuesday.
Cuban has previously said that AI models can’t provide all the answers and are “stupid” but like “a savant that remembers everything.”
At a June conference, the CEO of French AI lab Mistral said that a risk of using AI for everything is that humans will stop trying.
“The biggest risk with 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 or act for ourselves,” Arthur Mensch said.
America’s largest network of labor unions has condemned ICE after a federal agent on Saturday shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident.
The AFL-CIO, which represents nearly 15 million workers, called Pretti’s death “senseless.”
“As tens of thousands of Minnesotans made clear peacefully and powerfully yesterday, the Trump administration’s horrific operation — and their actions aimed at stoking violence and chaos — must end,” the labor group said in a statement.
“America’s unions join the call for ICE to immediately leave Minnesota before anyone else is hurt or killed. We demand local authorities conduct a full, transparent investigation that will lead to accountability for this tragic and violent act, and for Congress to use its power to hold ICE accountable.”
Residents mourned Alex Pretti, who was killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
A federal agent fatally shot Pretti in Minneapolis, where he worked as an ICU nurse at a US Department of Veterans Affairs hospital. Minneapolis police confirmed on Saturday that Pretti is a US citizen. He had been filming the agents when the confrontation began.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Border Patrol and ICE, said Pretti was carrying a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and “approached” agents at the scene. The department said officers tried to disarm Pretti, but he resisted. In multiple videos of the incident, however, Pretti is never seen threatening agents and is disarmed and subdued before he is shot. Minneapolis police said Pretti had a permit to carry the weapon.
The DHS deployed ICE and other federal agents to Minnesota as part of an immigration enforcement sweep called Operation Metro Surge, which began in December. The department says it has deployed around 2,000 federal agents across the state to detain and deport illegal immigrants. Trump has made securing the border and deporting those in the US who lack proper paperwork a central part of his administration’s agenda.
Local residents and business owners, however, have criticized the tactics federal agents are using to find and detain those people, resulting in protests across the state. Tensions further escalated after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, on January 7.
The CEOs of Minnesota’s largest businesses, including Target, Cargill, Allianz, and UnitedHealth, called for “immediate de-escalation” in a joint statement on Sunday.
A federal agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7.
ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP
On Saturday, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham shared a statement calling for a “full and transparent investigation” into the recent shootings.
“‘Operation Metro Surge’ is not and has never been about enforcing immigration law. This is about a President who is angry with the people of Minnesota for disagreeing with his policies and is weaponizing the federal government against us in retribution,” Burnham said.
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing Pretti and other federal workers in the US, also criticized the Trump administration in a statement on Saturday. As an employee of the VA hospital, Pretti was a member of AFGE Local 3669.
“While details of the incident are still emerging, one fact is already clear: this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct result of an administration that has chosen reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership and de-escalation,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in the statement.
Kelley said the presence of federal agents has stoked fear and division in the community.
“I urge everyone to remain disciplined and measured in public, even as we are rightly angry. Still, we must do what we can to maintain peace and calm,” Kelley said. “But do not mistake restraint for acceptance. Accountability will come, and AFGE will not be silent about the policies and decisions that led us here.”
