Google DeepMind Co-Founder Shane Legg Joins Safety-First Camp in AI Debate

Google DeepMind Co-Founder Shane Legg is warning that artificial intelligence advances must not come before AI safety, the Financial Times reported Wednesday (Sept. 16).

“We’re living in a period now where capabilities are advancing very, very quickly,” said Legg, per the report. “But we can’t let capabilities get ahead of safety.”

His comments came amid a debate in Silicon Valley over the need to slow the release of new AI models due to company concerns over safety risks. An essay proposing such a move by Anthropic CEO and Co-Founder Dario Amodei titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” was published Saturday (Sept. 12).

Legg said in the report that the essay was “interesting directionally” and “worth considering,” but he added that “we need to really work through the details of that and how that would work in practice.”

Legg launched the DeepMind Institute Wednesday to consider the implications of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which the company defines as a system that displays the cognitive capabilities of the human brain, according to the report.

My journey to develop AGI spans 25 yrs, including 10+ yrs thinking about technical & societal perspectives at Google DeepMind.
AGI is on the horizon – we need deeper understanding of its implications. To help, we’ve created the DeepMind Institute. https://t.co/dpc2y4IGT1

— Shane Legg (@ShaneLegg) September 16, 2026

However, he said it’s too early to say AGI has arrived, despite pronouncements this month by executives at OpenAI and Nvidia. Legg said he is “comfortable” with his long-held projection that there is a 50% chance of “minimal” AGI by 2028, per the report.

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered his thoughts on AI safety Tuesday (Sept. 15) in posts shared across his social media accounts.

“There is a lot of debate about slowing progress on capabilities until alignment catches up,” Zuckerberg said in a post on social platform X. “My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models.”

Last month I wrote about how we can build a positive and safe future for everyone: https://t.co/eoLGVY8yad

Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens.

The reality is:

– People won’t want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don’t do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned.

There is a lot of debate about slowing progress on capabilities until alignment catches up. My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models. Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind.

– Labs face significant liability if their models cause harm, so they have a strong incentive to prevent this as well.

Meta delayed shipping Muse for several months to focus on safety and security. We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us. I’m proud of the security foundations we’ve built.

– Engaging independent evaluators and advisors is industry best practice. MSL already does this today in several areas because it helps produce better work. Other labs can just do this too. In general, it would be helpful for there to be a larger and more diverse ecosystem of evaluators.

– Committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely. Meta has made this commitment and other labs can do this as well.

I believe the key to building a positive future for everyone is maintaining the right balance of power. This is within our power to do.

— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) September 15, 2026

As AI labs risk “significant liability if their models cause harm,” Zuckerberg said in the post, companies have an incentive to halt potential problems. Meta delayed the release of its Muse AI due to “safety and security” reasons.

“We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us,” Zuckerberg said in the post.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster examined the AI safety debate in a column Wednesday, expressing skepticism about Amodei’s argument that pacing AI development would let developers focus more on safety without giving up their commercial advantage.

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