The good future, according to Demis Hassabis
What Hassabis says a good outcome with AI looks like, drawn from 168 transcribed recordings of interviews, podcasts, lectures, panels and TV appearances (about 118 hours, including some duplicate uploads of the same event). It also covers whether he ever talks about Iain M. Banks's Culture, or about humans ending up as AI's pets. He is a lifelong Culture fan and brings it up himself, again and again.
The short answer
No other book comes up as often. The Culture is his standard answer whenever he is asked for a sci-fi picture of a good future, and he raises it unprompted in answers about art, optimism and life after AGI. He has called it "the best depiction of a post-AGI future, an optimistic post-AGI future" Ezra Klein Show · Jul 2023 · 1:29:26 ↗transcript and "the one I've always liked most." Big Technology · Jan 2025 · 0:54:51 ↗transcript
What he takes from it is coexistence, abundance and spreading to the stars. The AIs "sort of coexist in this largely peaceful way" with humanity. WCIT lecture · Jun 2026 · 0:58:45 ↗transcript He never mentions the Minds running society, and he says AI should be built as a tool first.
The only time a host used the word, in Athens in 2025, she asked how AI tools can make us "superhuman and not just the pets of AI." He didn't take up the "pets" part at all and talked about creative tools: "I think it will democratize creativity." Endeavor Athens · Sep 2025 · 0:52:11 ↗transcript
When Hannah Fry put Stuart Russell's worry to him, that we might all become "like the royal princes of the past," with luxury and no purpose, he half-accepted it: "maybe we'll all be playing computer games. I don't know. But is that a bad thing even or not, right? Who knows?" Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Aug 2024 · 0:36:53 ↗transcript The only pet he talks about is his dog.
What he takes from the Culture
These are the five fullest mentions. In every one he raises Banks himself; at most, a host asks a general question about sci-fi or optimism.
"I would recommend Consider Phlebas by Ian Banks, which is part of the Culture series of novels. Very formative for me, and I read that while I was writing Theme Park. And I still think it's the best depiction of a post-AGI future, an optimistic post-AGI future, where we're traveling the stars and humanity sort of reached its…"
His closing book pick, after Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality and Egan's Permutation City. The sentence is cut off in the recording. It is the only time he names a single Banks novel. Ezra Klein Show · Jul 2023 · 1:29:26 ↗transcript
"Books like the Culture series by Ian Banks and so on. It's always been my favorite since I was a teenager of a depiction of. You know, maximum human flourishing across the cosmos, you know, helped by AI systems, solving a lot of these fundamental problems for us, helping us solve a lot of these problems."
Kevin Roose had asked what role humans play "in a world where AGI exists and can just sort of run everything on our behalf." Hassabis first said we should be "making tools to assist human experts", then moved to abundance and the Culture. Note the correction mid-sentence, from AI "solving… for us" to "helping us solve". (The same episode exists as a second transcript with different timestamps.) Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:37:41 ↗transcript
"I think that's the best depiction of a post-AGI universe where, you know, AIs and you've basically got societies of AIs and humans and kind of alien species, actually, and sort of maximum human flourishing across the galaxy. That's a kind of amazing, compelling future that I would hope for humanity."
Asked for a book or film that makes him optimistic. He named Blade Runner as his favourite sci-fi film, "but maybe it's not that optimistic." This is the only mention that describes AIs as members of the society rather than helpers. Possible · Apr 2025 · 0:51:48 ↗transcript
"It's in a post-AGI world where there are AGI systems coexisting with human society and also alien society. Humanity has basically maximally flourished and spread to the galaxy. And that, I think, is a great vision of how things might go in the positive case."
Alex Kantrowitz asked for his vision of a world with superintelligence. He set it "a thousand years into the future" and went straight on to say we need "some great philosophers." Big Technology · Jan 2025 · 0:55:09 ↗transcript
"I'd point to Ian Banks as one of my favorite sci-fi novelists and the Culture series. And that depicts a future world, maybe a thousand years from now, where humanity's spread to the stars. And there are also AIs as well, but they sort of coexist in this largely peaceful way."
A questioner raised Dune, in which AI enslaved humanity. Hassabis agreed that "if things go badly wrong, there may not be potential to kind of just walk that back," then offered the Culture as the case where "humanity did get this right." He went on to ask sci-fi writers for more "positive stories." WCIT lecture · Jun 2026 · 0:58:45 ↗transcript
The other six mentions are shorter:
- 2018, Royal Academy of Arts. Asked about the art world's dystopian AI, he said art should be more creative and pointed to "brilliant books about futures with AIs and humans in them that have really interesting worlds, like Ian Banks." Royal Academy of Arts · Sep 2018 · 1:10:08 ↗transcript
- 2019, Hannah Fry. Formative reading, after Asimov's Foundation: "a sort of space opera about how the universe would look after humanity's built AI and coexists with it." Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Sep 2019 · 0:22:37 ↗transcript
- 2026, Cleo Abram. Asked for "the plot of the sci-fi movie in your head": "one of my favorite series was the Culture series by Ian Banks… like 1,000 years in the future. But I think even 50 years, some of this could happen." Huge Conversations with Cleo Abram · Apr 2026 · 0:55:23 ↗transcript
- 2026, Google I/O. Listing what led him to AI: "reading a lot of science fiction, Asimov's Foundation series, Ian Banks' Culture series." Google I/O · May 2026 · 0:37:14 ↗transcript
- 2026, The Next Big Thing. His 2050: "this interview on one of the moons of Jupiter and building Dyson spheres… and there's lots of good sci-fi about this, the culture series by Hugh Banks [sic] and so on." The Next Big Thing · Jun 2026 · 0:20:20 ↗transcript
- 2026, Royal Society of Arts. "It was Asimov's Foundation series, and it was Ian Banks' Culture series that really inspired the sorts of world or universe that I thought could be amazing for humanity to get to." RSA Albert Medal · Sep 2026 · 0:45:49 ↗transcript
The pattern: humanity is the one doing things. It "goes to the stars," it is "waking up the universe with human consciousness," and AI is "helping us solve." He never describes Minds governing people, humans living as wards, or anything else about how Culture society works. His stock phrase "maximum human flourishing" first appears alongside the Culture in 2024 and is later used on its own, without the citation. In May 2026 an audience question about life after AGI got "maximum human flourishing… there's quite a few great science fiction" before the recording cuts; he was probably about to name Banks again, but it isn't in the transcript.
Close to the pets question
He never describes humans being kept or looked after by AI. When others bring up the idea, he steers to tools, to humans keeping up, or to an open question about meaning.
"So there's sort of this debate about tools versus creatures you sometimes hear. And I think that we should be firmly, I'm in the account, we should be making tools to assist human experts."
His first answer to Roose's "run everything on our behalf" question. "I'm in the account" is probably a mistranscription of "in the camp". Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:36:24 ↗transcript
"Then we should have radical abundance. And assuming we make sure we distribute that fairly and equitably, then we will be in this position where we'll have more freedom to choose what to do. And then meaning will be a big philosophical question."
The start of his reply to Fry's "royal princes" question. He treats a life of leisure as freedom and hands the question of meaning to "philosophers. Perhaps theologians even." Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Aug 2024 · 0:36:19 ↗transcript
"I think we are Turing complete… And so I think it will be more like, you know, Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen playing an amazing chess move. I couldn't have come up with it, but they can explain it to me why it's a good move."
He rejects the picture in which humans will be "closer to an ant" next to AGI. He made the same argument on Lex Fridman in 2022. Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Aug 2024 · 0:46:10 ↗transcript
"I would advocate having humans in the loop… Most critical AI systems, but the problem is they may get outcompeted by systems that don't have human in the loop."
The closest he gets to naming gradual disempowerment, on a panel with Max Tegmark and Yoshua Bengio. His answer is international agreements. Davos panel · Feb 2025 · 0:19:41 ↗transcript
"I think as a first step, it would be better if we have the choice to build these systems as tools. And I'm not saying that they should never go beyond tools."
Lex Fridman asked why AI should always be tools rather than friends. Lex Fridman Podcast · Jul 2022 · 1:58:54 ↗transcript By 2026 he describes conscious-seeming AI as a "second Rubicon" that society may decide not to cross. Stanford GSB · Jun 2026 · 0:50:53 ↗transcript
"We still love the 100 meters Olympic race, even though we have vehicles that can go way faster than Usain Bolt… We have infinite capacity to adapt and evolve with our technologies."
Alex Kantrowitz said Go and StarCraft pros had concluded "it's basically over for humans versus machines." Big Technology at Davos · Jan 2026 · 0:25:21 ↗transcript
"Be like a trusted assistant, maybe to give advice, to help in your daily life, give you some information to make a better decision."
A KBS host asked how AI should know what humans want "and control them". He reframed it so that AI advises and people decide. KBS News · Apr 2026 · 0:17:23 ↗transcript
Other people's lines, not his: "ask a chicken" and the baby controlling its mother (Geoffrey Hinton, SvD 2024); dogs, pets and factory farming (Ray Kurzweil, Asilomar 2017); AI as "a helicopter parent for the human race" (Stuart Russell, same panel); "we're cooked" (Bengio, Davos 2025).
His positive vision, in six parts
1. Cure disease first
This is the oldest part of his vision. He traces it to an epiphany at age 11 at a chess tournament.
"What if we used that brainpower for something more useful, like solving cancer or curing some disease? Wouldn't that be a better use?"
"If you ask me the number one thing AI can do for humanity, it will be to solve hundreds of terrible diseases. I can't imagine a better use case for AI."
"It would revolutionize human health, and I think one day maybe we can cure all disease with the help of AI."
He said this could happen "within the next decade or so." 60 Minutes · Apr 2025 · 0:28:18 ↗transcript
"There should be 20 alpha folds, right? And there should be, you know, we got to like stop talking sort of in the hypothetical about curing cancer and actually cure cancer, right?"
2. A golden age of science, and the nature of reality
"Step one, solve intelligence. Step two, use it to solve everything else."
DeepMind's founding motto. Academy of Achievement · Apr 2018 · 0:00:29 ↗transcript
"AGI could end up being the ultimate general purpose tool to help us understand the universe around us and our place in it."
"We are going to be entering what I feel like is a new renaissance. It will be a new golden age of scientific discovery. I don't know what will happen beyond that."
"I would be really worried for humanity if given the other challenges that we have, climate… aging, resources, all of that. If I didn't know something like AI was coming down the line."
Lex Fridman Podcast · Jul 2025 · 2:06:01 ↗transcript He has argued since 2019 that we need either "an exponential improvement in human behavior" or one in technology, and sees little sign of the first. Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Sep 2019 · 0:32:16 ↗transcript
3. Radical abundance, starting with energy
Cheap clean energy is his "root node": solve it, and water, materials and space travel follow.
"And then what would happen after those kinds of first stage things is you kind of have this, sometimes people describe it as radical abundance."
Later in the same interview: "I do think that is a very plausible end state, the optimistic one I painted you." Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Mar 2022 · 0:14:07 ↗transcript
"Energy becomes free or cheap, right? And then suddenly the nature of money even changes."
"I expect AGI, the advent of AGI, to be maybe something like 10 times the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but maybe 10 times faster as well."
"How can that not need a new type of economic system? It has to. And I don't think it's any of the ones we've tried because they were all done under the guise of zero sum."
Stanford GSB · Jun 2026 · 0:47:51 ↗transcript Elsewhere he has suggested something better than universal basic income, "more like direct democracy type systems where you can, you know, vote with a certain amount of credits." Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Dec 2025 · 0:35:36 ↗transcript
4. To the stars: "maximum human flourishing"
"I feel it will be something like the realisation of the true potential of humanity."
On extrapolating "a few hundred more years" with AGI. Google DeepMind: The Podcast · Sep 2019 · 0:25:10 ↗transcript
"And colonize the galaxy. I think the beginning of that will happen in the next 20, 30 years if the next period goes well."
"We'll be in a world of radical abundance where we can use those energy sources to travel the stars and explore the galaxy. That's what I think our destiny is going to be."
"It goes to the stars and we have this maximum human flourishing. And by 2050, hopefully we should be having this interview on one of the moons of Jupiter and building Dyson spheres and really realizing, kind of waking up the universe with human consciousness."
5. Humans superpowered, with an AI that works for them
"Maybe we'll have even better tools that enhance our own minds so that we become more intelligent and more capable and therefore stay at the forefront of innovations long into the future, way past the singularity."
The Life Scientific · Nov 2019 · 0:32:58 ↗transcript He returns several times to brain-computer interfaces as "one way for us to keep up." Axios AI+ Summit · Dec 2025 · 0:28:05 ↗transcript
"Perhaps what I dream of is, again, assistants that take care of a lot of the mundane things, perhaps replying to everyday emails and other things so that you protect your own mind and brain space."
"It works for you as the individual. That's what I'd like to see with these systems."
6. Meaning after work
"Perhaps traveling on a starship to Alpha Centauri, thinking about that, meditating on these ideas, maybe doing some extreme sports, stuff like that. I think there'll be plenty of very exciting things for us to do."
His own plan for when "they don't need humans to run companies or go on podcasts anymore." He adds "mountain climbing up Mount Olympus on Mars." Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:53:36 ↗transcript
"We do a lot of things today from extreme sports to art that aren't necessarily directly to do with economic gain. So I think we will find meaning."
In the same answer he says meaning and purpose are "the things that keep me up at night." WEF Davos · Jan 2026 · 0:18:47 ↗transcript
"Caring jobs where you really want the human emotional empathy and touch, I think are going to be much more valued in future. And that's maybe a good thing, right?"
Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:52:51 ↗transcript He has said since 2018 that "maybe nurses will be paid more than doctors." Academy of Achievement · Apr 2018 · 0:34:54 ↗transcript
"Maybe there's new forms of art to be discovered. And I think these tools used in the right way will help us discover that."
How it changed over time
- 2004–2014 Games designer, then neuroscientist and founder. AGI is "20 plus years away." The payoff he describes is understanding the mind; there is no social vision yet.
- 2015–17 Solve intelligence, then use it to solve everything else. AGI is decades away. He calls the singularity "a bit of a science fiction concept." Royal Academy of Engineering · 2016 · 0:58:29 ↗transcript At Asilomar he says AI done right is "going to be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity." FLI Asilomar · Jan 2017 · 0:42:22 ↗transcript
- 2018–19 The Culture appears for the first time (Royal Academy, 2018), as a positive alternative to dystopian sci-fi. "Realisation of the true potential of humanity." Humans stay in the loop; nurses might be paid more than doctors.
- 2020–23 AlphaFold years. The first full utopia ("radical abundance," "a very plausible end state," 2022), qualified by "tools first" and the warning that abundance alone won't bring world peace. In 2023 the Culture becomes "the best depiction of… an optimistic post-AGI future."
- 2024 A coming "golden era" of discovery. The Culture as "my favorite since I was a teenager." Firmly "tools versus creatures." He calls himself "a cautious optimist." Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:44:32 ↗transcript
- 2025 The Culture twice: "the one I've always liked most" Big Technology · Jan 2025 · 0:54:51 ↗transcript and "societies of AIs and humans." Possible · Apr 2025 · 0:51:48 ↗transcript "Maximum human flourishing" and "traveling the stars" become stock phrases. He predicts the end of disease "within the next decade or so." 60 Minutes · Apr 2025 · 0:28:45 ↗transcript "What will be left to solve?" becomes a worry. Axios AI+ Summit · Dec 2025 · 0:09:33 ↗transcript
- 2026 His most expansive language and his sharpest hedges at once. He now says "we're in the foothills of the singularity," the reverse of his 2016 view, Royal Society · May 2026 · 0:21:11 ↗transcript and calls it "a kind of good word." Google I/O · May 2026 · 0:02:06 ↗transcript Dyson spheres, the moons of Jupiter, "our destiny." He mentions the Culture five times, and says some of it could arrive in "even 50 years." He also asks for a slower pace, calls meaning and purpose what keeps him up at night, and insists "the future is not written."
The hedges
He paints the picture readily, then hands the hardest parts (meaning, distribution, politics) to philosophers, economists and "society."
- "I think the future is really not written. And I don't believe anyone who says it is." RSA Albert Medal · Sep 2026 · 0:41:33 ↗transcript
- "How do we distribute the benefits of this widely? That's a societal problem. It's not a technological problem." BBC Nobel Minds · Dec 2024 · 0:24:32 ↗transcript
- "That's why I've been calling for, I think we knew great philosophers actually, and it will be a change to the human condition. But I don't think it necessarily has to be worse." ("We knew" is a mistranscription of "we need new".) Big Technology at Davos · Jan 2026 · 0:26:58 ↗transcript
- "I don't think that's enough, unfortunately, to get world peace because there's also other corrupting things like wanting power over people." On abundance. Lex Fridman Podcast · Jul 2022 · 2:03:16 ↗transcript
- "Maybe it would be good to have a slightly slower pace than we're currently predicting, even my timelines, so that we can get this right societally." WEF Davos · Jan 2026 · 0:21:20 ↗transcript
- "Like, I just sort of think this is for the next thousand years. Why rush?" City Arts & Lectures · May 2026 · 1:08:56 ↗transcript
- "So I would couch myself as a cautious optimist, right?" A label he has used for years. Hard Fork · Feb 2024 · 0:44:32 ↗transcript
The science fiction he actually cites
He often says he read "too much" science fiction as a boy. The works he names himself are:
Brought up by others, not him: Her (The Rundown host, Garry Tan); Westworld and Terminator (Royal Academy questioner); Dune (WCIT questioner); HAL 9000 (Wendy Hall); Ender's Game (New Frontier host, though he engaged with it); The MANIAC (Lex Fridman); McEwan's Machines Like Me (EPFL host); The Matrix (SvD interviewer and Hinton); Ex Machina (RAEng chair); WALL-E (Casey Newton, before Hassabis joined); "Machines of Loving Grace" (Max Tegmark, Dario Amodei); Contact's "technological adolescence" (Amodei).