Yoshua Bengio

Deep-learning pioneer; 2018 Turing Award; chair of the International AI Safety Report; founder of LawZero

Université de Montréal / Mila / LawZero

Forefathers of the field

Bengio is one of the scientists who built modern AI and now leads the world's main government-backed scientific assessment of AI risk. He has said there is roughly a one-in-five chance things turn out catastrophic, and in 2025 founded a nonprofit to build AI that understands the world without acting in it. He wants binding international rules and has signed calls to pause superintelligence development.

Their number

20%

"I got around, like, 20 per cent probability that it turns out catastrophic." (ABC News Australia, Background Briefing, July 15, 2023). He added: "Even if it was 0.1 per cent [chance of doom], I would be worried enough to say I'm going to devote the rest of my life to trying to prevent that from happening." In December 2025 he declined to give a single personal figure, citing surveys of ML researchers 'more like 10%' and calling even 1% 'unacceptable'.
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On timing

"My current estimate places a 95% confidence interval for the time horizon of superhuman intelligence at 5 to 20 years" (FAQ on Catastrophic AI Risks, June 24, 2023). In December 2025 (Diary of a CEO) he said threatening systems "could be in a few years or a decade or two."

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What they call for

  • International treaties 'with real teeth' and mutual US China verification
  • Licensing and monitoring of frontier AI
  • No open sourcing of the most powerful generalist models
  • Mandatory liability insurance for developers
  • Non agentic 'Scientist AI' as a safer design
  • International agreement on AI red lines
  • Prohibition on superintelligence until safety consensus

In their own words

  • Launched LawZero "in response to evidence that today's frontier AI models have growing dangerous capabilities and behaviours, including deception, cheating, lying, hacking, self-preservation, and more generally, goal misalignment."

    3 June 2025

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  • Chaired the International AI Safety Report 2026 (100+ experts, 30+ countries), which found current systems 'lack the capabilities' for loss-of-control risks 'but they are improving in relevant areas such as autonomous operation' and that 'technical safeguards are improving but still show significant limitations.'

    3 February 2026

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  • Signed the Statement on Superintelligence calling for 'a prohibition on the development of superintelligence' until there is scientific consensus on safety and public buy-in.

    22 October 2025

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Signed

  • FLI pause letter 2023
  • CAIS extinction statement 2023
  • Right to Warn letter 2024 (endorser)
  • Global Call for AI Red Lines 2025
  • FLI Statement on Superintelligence 2025

Last verified 1 September 2026

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