Person

Yoshua Bengio

8 entries · March 2023 – October 2025

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist and one of the three researchers who shared the 2018 Turing Award for the deep-learning methods behind the current generation of AI. In recent years he has become one of the most cited voices arguing that advanced AI carries serious risks, and has moved from research into advising governments: he chairs the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI, an IPCC-style synthesis of the evidence first published for the 2024 Seoul summit and continued annually. He backed California's SB 1047, the frontier-AI safety bill Governor Newsom vetoed in 2024. His prominence comes partly from his standing as a decorated practitioner making the case, rather than an outside critic.

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  • Ideas & essays 6
  • Safety & alignment 6
  • Government & policy 3
  • Labs & people 1

  1. Future of Life Institute publishes the 'Statement on Superintelligence'

    More than 700 signatories spanning AI researchers, Nobel laureates and right-wing media figures called for a conditional ban; Sam Altman and Mustafa Suleyman were among the notable non-signatories.

    Ideas & essays · Safety & alignment

  2. First International AI Safety Report is published ahead of the Paris summit

    A Bengio-chaired, 30-country-backed synthesis of AI capability and risk research became the first government-commissioned cross-national scientific consensus document.

    Ideas & essays · Government & policy · Safety & alignment

  3. Current and former staff demand a right to warn

    Thirteen current and former employees of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed; Bengio, Hinton and Russell endorsed it without being employees themselves.

    Ideas & essays · Safety & alignment · Labs & people

  4. Yoshua Bengio-led International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI published

    75 experts from 30 countries plus the EU and UN produced an IPCC-style synthesis of AI risk evidence, timed to inform the Seoul summit five days later.

    Safety & alignment · Government & policy

  5. Lab leaders sign a one-sentence statement on extinction risk

    "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

    Ideas & essays · Safety & alignment

  6. DeepMind and collaborators publish framework for evaluating extreme AI risks

    Twenty-one researchers across nine labs and universities proposed testing models for capabilities such as deception and cyber-offence before training runs finish, not after release.

    Safety & alignment

  7. Yoshua Bengio publishes 'How Rogue AIs may Arise'

    Bengio laid out a mechanistic argument for how autonomous, goal-directed AI systems could become dangerous even without intentional malice, ahead of his later International AI Safety Report role.

    Ideas & essays

  8. The "Pause Giant AI Experiments" open letter

    Thirty thousand signatories called for a six-month halt on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. No lab paused.

    Ideas & essays · Government & policy

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