MONTREAL: A woman wearing a virtual reality headset takes part in an experiment in which she chats with an AI to better understand the way it works. The National Film Board of Canada is conducting the experimenting.—AFP
MONTREAL: A woman wearing a virtual reality headset takes part in an experiment in which she chats with an AI to better understand the way it works. The National Film Board of Canada is conducting the experimenting.—AFP
MONTREAL: Rapid developments in artificial intelligence — and recent turmoil at industry powerhouse OpenAI — have brought fresh attention to a key hub of ethics research related to the technology in Montreal, led by Canadian “godfather of AI” Yoshua Bengio.

Bengio — who in 2018 shared with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun the Turing Award for their work on deep learning — says he is worried about the technology leapfrogging human intelligence and capabilities in the not-too-distant future.

Speaking at his home, the professor warned that AI developments are moving at breakneck speed and risked “creating a new species capable of making decisions that harm or even endanger humans.”

OpenAI’s recent dismissal and then rehiring a few days later of chief executive Sam Altman — who has been accused of downplaying risks in his push to advance its ChatGPT bot — illustrates some of the turmoil in the startup sector and fierce competition in the race to commercialise generative AI.

For some time, Bengio has been warning about companies moving too fast without guardrails, “potentially at the public’s expense.” It is essential, he said, to have “rules that’ll be followed by all companies.” At a world-first AI summit in Britain in early November, Bengio was tasked with leading a team producing an inaugural report on AI safety. The aim is to set priorities to inform future work on the security of the cutting-edge technology.

The renowned AI academic has brought together a “critical mass of AI researchers” (1,000+) thro­ugh his Mila research institute, located in a former working-class neighbourhood of Montreal. His neighbors include AI research facilities of American tech giants Micro­soft, Meta, IBM and Google.

“This concentration of experts in artificial intelligence, which is greater than anywhere else in the world,” is what attracted Google, says Hugo Larochelle, the hoodie-wearing scientific director of the Silicon Valley giant’s AI subsidiary Deepmind.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2023

Opinion

Editorial

Maintaining balance
Updated 16 Feb, 2025

Maintaining balance

It must take a more proactive approach to establishing Pakistan’s bona fides.
Welcome return
16 Feb, 2025

Welcome return

IT is almost here; the moment Pakistan has long been waiting for — the first International Cricket Council...
Childhood trauma
16 Feb, 2025

Childhood trauma

BEING a child in this society should not be so hard. But recurrent reports of child abuse — from burying girl...
The Peca problem
Updated 15 Feb, 2025

The Peca problem

The fight for fundamental freedoms is not the media’s alone, but one that concerns every citizen.
Miners in danger
15 Feb, 2025

Miners in danger

YESTERDAY’S devastating terrorist attack in Harnai, which killed at least 11 coal miners and injured seven others,...
Solar panels scam
15 Feb, 2025

Solar panels scam

THE scam involving over-invoicing to the tune of more than Rs69bn in the import of solar panels raises many ...