Yoshua Bengio: 'If you prioritize safety, leave frontier AI companies'
a day ago
- Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer of deep learning, expresses regret for not heeding earlier warnings about AI risks and for minimizing colleagues' concerns due to motivated reasoning.
- He urges frontier AI staff to reflect on whether they want to contribute to advancing systems that may push humanity toward catastrophe, and to consider leaving leading labs.
- Bengio highlights that safety efforts at major companies are insufficient to slow the race toward recursive self-improvement, and that CEOs face conflicting incentives from shareholders and competition.
- He founded LawZero, a non-profit dedicated to building safe-by-design AI, with over $200 million in government commitments from Canada and Germany, and a plan for billions more.
- He appeals to AI researchers to join safety-focused organizations like AI Safety Institutes or LawZero, emphasizing that individual agency can make a difference.
- He acknowledges the difficulty but insists that enough people leaving frontier labs could stop the race, citing former employees' resignations and moral obligations.