Demis Hassabis Calls for a FINRA-Style AI Watchdog — With the Power to Hit the Brakes

Nobel laureate and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis published a manifesto calling for a US-led AI Standards Body modeled on Wall Street's FINRA, with the authority to test frontier models before release and coordinate industry-wide slowdowns if necessary.

The man behind Google's AI thinks the world needs a referee — and he has drafted the rules. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and a Nobel laureate, published a manifesto on Tuesday calling for a US-led AI Standards Body that would test frontier models before release and, if necessary, hit the brakes on the entire industry.

His template is FINRA, the industry-funded watchdog that polices Wall Street under government oversight. The proposed body would be a public-private partnership, funded mostly by the AI labs themselves, with a board stacked with independent experts including Turing Award winners, plus open-source and government voices.

Hassabis argues that artificial general intelligence is "probably only a few short years away" and that the world is not ready. He calls this a "precious window" before AGI arrives — and it is closing.

The body's mandate: test the most powerful models before they ship. Labs would hand over their systems voluntarily, up to 30 days before release, for evaluation against cyber-attack capability, biological and nuclear risk, and signs of deception. Once the regime matures, a "Frontier-class" model would have to pass before reaching the US market. The rules would apply to any such model, open or closed, wherever it is built.

The most striking part is the brake. Hassabis says the body could be "ratcheted up" as risks grow, including "coordinating a slowdown in development among the Frontier Labs if deemed necessary." It is a remarkable thing for a lab boss to propose — he is asking for a mechanism that could, in theory, make his own industry stop.

The timing is not accidental. Last month, the Trump administration froze Anthropic's most powerful models overnight with an export order. Weeks of tense negotiation followed with no rulebook. Hassabis called that "a bit of a wake-up call." OpenAI, wary of the same fate, held back GPT-5.6 until the White House cleared it.

He is not alone. Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei jointly called for a US-led coalition at the G7. Amodei wants an FAA-style agency that can block unsafe models. The lab chiefs now agree Washington should regulate them. They differ mainly on who holds the gavel.

Hassabis frames all of this in near-cosmic terms. AGI, he writes, is less like the internet than like fire or electricity. "We've essentially found a way to make sand think. It's miraculous." His timeline is aggressive: he wants the body running before the end of the year.

Sources: The Next Web, OfficeChai, MachineBrief