Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis believes progress toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) is moving faster than expected and that society now has only a few years to prepare. He believes AGI could arrive around 2030, though acknowledges it could be here in 2029 — or even sooner.

In an interview with Axios, Hassabis said that today’s AI agents — systems capable of performing tasks independently — should be viewed as a sort of “practice run” for significantly more powerful AI in the future. He also warned that governments, economists, and society at large are not taking this development seriously enough.

One particular risk he highlighted is that AI systems in the future might begin to improve their own development. “All the leading labs are pretty focused on that,” Hassabis told Axios. “It will yield clear benefits in the form of faster research. But there are also risks associated with that type of system.”