DeepMind CEO: AI won't kill developer jobs, it'll boost productivity

At Google I/O, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis pushed back against the narrative that AI will eliminate coding jobs. While unveiling Gemini 3.5 Flash—a model trained to perform complex agentic coding tasks like translating large codebases, debugging intricate code, and even writing entire operating systems—he argued that fears of mass developer displacement are shortsighted. 'I have no idea why people are going around talking with certainty about that,' Hassabis told WIRED, suggesting that executives predicting job cuts may have ulterior motives, like fundraising. 'If engineers are becoming three or four times more productive, then we just want to do three or four times more stuff.' Open about Google's vast ambitions—from drug discovery to game design—Hassabis sees productivity gains as an opportunity to reallocate talent, not sack workers.

Google also unveiled several complementary tools at I/O: Antigravity, a coding tool that leverages Gemini 3.5 Flash for frontier-level reasoning at lower cost; Spark, an agentic assistant embedded in Google Cloud with restrictive data access for safety; an Android version with a built-in AI agent; and a refreshed Google Search that can generate apps on the fly. While AI coding has captivated the industry—Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex lead developer adoption—Hassabis remains grounded. He doubts models will soon reach superhuman AI or produce blockbuster apps without human guidance. 'There's something missing,' he said, emphasizing that the physical world and true experimentation still demand human ingenuity.