DeepMind co-founder says AI will be able to invent, market, run businesses by 2029

The next five years will be revolutionary for the business world, at least according to DeepMind co-founder and Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.

The artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer recently spoke at the World Economic Forum, where, during a panel discussion, he told audience members that it was his belief that an AI system could invent, manufacture, market and sell a product — essentially running its own business — before 2030.

Per Suleyman:

“I’m pretty sure that within the next five years, certainly before the end of the decade, we are going to have not just those capabilities, but those capabilities widely available for very cheap, potentially even in open source.”

While many would describe a machine capable of such feats as an artificial general intelligence (AGI), Suleyman declined to engage on that subject. He called the term AGI a hazy concept and said it was “pretty unclear.”

Instead, according to Business Insider, he stated that he believes researchers should focus on practical applications for AI technology.

In previous commentary, Suleyman had described his “Turing Test,” an analogue for determining how human-like an AI system is, as being whether an AI system could autonomously (and legally) earn $1 million.

He’s also spoken at length about the need to constrain artificial intelligence systems before it’s too late. In his book, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma, published in 2023, Suleyman writes that the next “five years or so are absolutely critical.”

Suleyman has also advocated for United States government intervention in the AI sector. Last year, he joined OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and executives from Google, Amazon and other tech companies for a meeting with the U.S. Senate to discuss potential regulatory efforts for AI.

While no enforceable action came from the committee meetings, Suleyman and other tech leaders did sign a voluntary agreement to avoid knowingly creating harmful AI systems.

Related: Senators unveil bipartisan blueprint for comprehensive AI regulation