More than a decade ago, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab predicted that by 2028, AI will have a half-and-half shot of being about as smart as humans — and now, he’s holding firm on that forecast. In an interview with tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg said that he still thinks that researchers have a 50-50 chance of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), a stance he publicly announced at the very end of 2011 on his blog. It’s a notable prediction considering the exponentially growing interest in the space. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has long advocated for an AGI, a hypothetical agent that is capable of accomplishing intellectual tasks as well as a human, that can be of benefit to all. But whether we’ll ever be able to get to that point — let alone agree on one definition of AGI — remains to be seen. Legg apparently began looking towards his 2028 goalpost all the way back in 2001 after reading “The Age of Spiritual Machines,” the groundbreaking 1999 book by fellow Google AI luminary Ray Kurzweil that predicts a future of superhuman AIs. “There were two really important points in his book that I came to believe as true,” he explained. “One is that computational power would grow exponentially for at least a few decades. And that the quantity of data in the world would grow exponentially for a few decades.” Paired with an understanding of the trends of the era, such as…Google AI Chief Says There’s a 50% Chance We’ll Hit AGI in Just 5 Years