An AI pioneer wants to build systems that are not harmful to humanity.
Yoshua Bengio Launches Lab to Develop Safe AI Systems
Yoshua Bengio is a man of consistent ideas. A Turing Award winner in 2018 and scientific director of MILA, the Montreal Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI), this Canadian computer scientist is renowned as one of the pioneers of deep learning, which has driven the resurgence of AI over the past fifteen years. He is also known for raising concerns, more recently, about the inherent risks of these technologies, including catastrophic scenarios that could lead to the annihilation of humanity.
In January, he published an extensive study he coordinated to assess these risks. While the report was balanced, he himself holds a more decisive opinion, expressing concern about a possible mass extinction and calling for a precautionary principle to curb current development. On June 3rd, he took a new step, no longer content with simply issuing warnings. He is launching a new private research laboratory to develop “technical solutions for safe AI systems by design.” In other words, as he explained, to create AIs “that will not turn against us and cannot be used to harm.”
Remaining content is for subscribers only.
Enjoyed this post by Thibault Helle? Subscribe for more insights and updates straight from the source.
