Human-level artificial intelligence will soon be achievable, according to the lead researcher at Google’s DeepMind AI division.

Dr Nando de Freitas said that it was “game over” in the long search to realise artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the company revealed an AI system that can complete a wide range of complex tasks from mundane to creative.

Responding to a piece titled, “humans will never achieve AGI” in The Next Web, DeepMind’s research director said that such an outcome was inevitable.

The UK-based company’s new Gato AI has to be scaled up to create an AI capable of rivaling human intelligence.

“It’s all about making these models bigger, safer, compute efficient, faster at sampling, smarter memory, more modalities, innovative data, on/offline…” he said. “Solving these challenges is what will deliver AGI,” he added.

However, some leading AI researchers view AGI as an existential catastrophe for humans, where Professor Nick Bostrom from Oxford University said that speculating a “superintelligent” system that will surpass human intelligence will replace humanity on earth.

Google is already working on a big red button to protect against risks from intelligence explosions, The Independent reported.