I’m very curious where you found Hassabis saying DL is at a dead end. I would be really interested to watch or read if you have a link.
"I would regard it as one component, maybe with another dozen or half-a-dozen breakthroughs we're going to need like that.
"There's a lot more innovation that's required." https://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-deepmind-founder...
I presume this is the thing - I don't think he actually said 'dead end'.
Even if all you care about is general AI, there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made within DL.
I think the point is just that we should be open to other approaches because they will be needed as well