At the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, Demis Hassabis — co‑founder and CEO of Google DeepMind — made a clear point: despite recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, current AI systems do not yet match human‑like intelligence. Hassabis explained that while advanced models such as Gemini and others have achieved impressive feats, including solving complex problems, they still fall short of what researchers refer to as artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a system capable of reasoning, learning, and planning across a wide range of tasks with a depth and flexibility similar to a human mind.
Hassabis outlined three major limitations of today's AI that prevent it from being truly general. First, current models lack continual learning — the ability to adapt and learn from new experiences in real time once they’ve been deployed. Second, they struggle with long‑term planning, meaning they can handle short tasks well but cannot formulate strategies that span across extended periods. Third — and perhaps most striking — is their inconsistency: AI can excel at incredibly complex tasks yet still make mistakes on very simple ones depending on how problems are phrased.
Hassabis used the analogy of what he called “jagged intelligences” to describe this uneven performance. For example, some AI systems have been able to reach gold‑medal standards in international mathematics competitions — a noteworthy achievement — yet make errors on elementary questions under slightly different conditions. This jagged performance, he argued, underscores a fundamental gap between today’s narrow AI successes and the deeper, consistent reasoning expected of human‑level intelligence.
Despite these limitations, Hassabis suggested that AGI remains a future possibility, not an impossibility. He and other AI leaders at the summit discussed ongoing research and the transformative potential of AI while also emphasizing the importance of responsible development and international cooperation on safety and governance — especially given AI’s growing role in society and the global economy.
