The great debate How fears and hopes for its future are dividing pioneers of the technology

Demis Hassabis says he is not pessimistic about artificial intelligence. But that did not stop the chief executive 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 is a key reason for the global Al safety summit convened by Rishi Sunak next week in Bletchley Park, the base of the visionary codebreakers who deciphered German communications during the second world war.

"I am not in the pessimistic camp about Al obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be working on it," Hassabis tells the Guardian in an interview 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 achieved stunning breakthroughs in AI under his leadership. The company is now known as Google DeepMind after merging with the search firm's other Al operations.

Hassabis's unit is behind the AlphaFold program, which predicts the 3D shapes of proteins in the human body. This revolutionary achievement maps out the biological building blocks of life and will help achieve breakthroughs in areas such as discovering new medicines. This year, Hassabis was jointly awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in science, the Lasker basic medical research award, for work on AlphaFold. Last month Hassabis's team released AlphaMissense, which uses the same Al program to spot protein malformations that could cause disease.

Hassabis says he would have preferred the May statement to contain references to AI's potential benefits. "I would have had a line saying about all the incredible opportunities that Al is going to bring: medicine, science, all the things help in everyday life, assisting in everyday life."

He concedes that AI advances will trigger "disruption" in the jobs market - skilled professions such as law, medicine and finance are at risk, according to experts - but he says the impact will be "positive overall" as the economy adapts.