Hope or horror?

The great AI debate dividing its pioneers

- Dan Milmo

Demis Hassabis says he is not in the “pessimistic” camp about artificial intelligence. But that did not stop the CEO of Google DeepMind signing a statement in May warning that the threat of extinction from AI should be treated as a societal risk comparable to pandemics or nuclear weapons.

That uneasy gap between hope and horror, and the desire to bridge it, is a key reason why the UK prime minister Rishi Sunak convened this week’s global AI safety summit in Bletchley Park, a symbolic choice as the base of the visionary codebreakers – including computing pioneer Alan Turing – who deciphered German communications during the second world war.

“I am not in the pessimistic camp about AI obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be working on it,” Hassabis told the Guardian at Google DeepMind’s base in King’s Cross, London.

“But I’m not in the ‘there’s nothing to see here and nothing to worry about’ [camp]. It’s a middle way. This can go well but we’ve got to be active about shaping that.”

Hassabis, a 47-year-old Briton, co-founded UK company DeepMind in 2010. It was bought by Google in 2014 and has realised stunning breakthroughs in AI under his leadership. The company is now known as Google DeepMind after merging with the search firm’s other AI operations, with Hassabis at the helm as CEO.