Montreal,QC – Yoshua Bengio,a pioneer of modern artificial intelligence and scientific director of Mila – Quebec AI Institute,is sounding a stark warning about the current trajectory of AI development,particularly the focus on large foundation models and “agentic AI.” While acknowledging the impressive advancements exemplified by models like OpenAI’s “o” series and their “chain of thought” reasoning capabilities, Bengio argues the relentless pursuit of autonomous AI systems without prioritizing safety could lead to “catastrophic risks.”
Bengio, who championed unsupervised pre-training two decades ago believing in the power of synergistic knowledge, now expresses concern that the current approach hasn’t solved the critical problem of ensuring AI behavior aligns with human values. He contrasts this with his current research, dubbed “Scientist AI,” which focuses on building non-agentic systems designed for understanding the world through reliable prediction, rather than autonomous action or human imitation.
“Without a fundamental shift in our approach-away from uncontrolled autonomous agents and towards safe-by-design A.I.-these great advances could lead to catastrophic risks,” bengio stated. “Scientist A.I.” aims to be “epistemically honest,” avoiding confident falsehoods and sidestepping the issues of misalignment and deceptive behavior inherent in agentic AI.
The comments come as Canada seeks to maintain its strategic position in the global AI landscape. Bengio, who deliberately chose to build an AI hub in Quebec to foster open collaboration and prioritize AI for social good – areas like healthcare and climate change – believes Canada must focus on developing and securing its AI assets, nurturing domestic companies, and forging international alliances to remain competitive, particularly as other nations rapidly expand their AI capabilities. Mila,founded with these principles,has become a leading academic deep learning research center attracting talent focused on positive societal impact,offering a contrast to the more profit-driven habitat of Silicon Valley.