Yoshua Bengio

TURING WINNER. THEN HE TURNED AGAINST THE MACHINE

Bengio pushed neural networks before they were fashionable, built Montreal into a deep-learning capital, shared the Turing Award — then decided in 2023 to spend the rest of his career reducing catastrophic AI risk. Governments now ask him to chair the frontier-risk report.

1. 1993

   HE BUILDS A NEURAL-NETWORK BEACHHEAD IN MONTREAL

   Bengio established the research group at Université de Montréal that became the foundation of Mila and a major center for deep learning.

   SOURCES: Milafirst-party

2. 2017

   MONTREAL'S BEACHHEAD BECOMES A FULL INSTITUTE

   Mila expanded through a partnership linking Université de Montréal and McGill, consolidating Montreal's role as a major AI research center.

   SOURCES: Milafirst-party

3. Mar 27, 2019

   DEEP LEARNING GETS THE TURING AWARD

   ACM named Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun recipients of the 2018 A.M. Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.

   SOURCES: ACMreported

4. 2023

   THE PIONEER STARTS WORRYING ABOUT THE MACHINE

   Bengio says that in 2023 he decided to devote the remainder of his career to reducing catastrophic risks from advanced AI.

   SOURCES: LawZerofirst-party

5. Nov 2, 2023

   GOVERNMENTS ASK HIM TO CHAIR THE FRONTIER-RISK REPORT

   The United Kingdom commissioned Bengio to chair an international scientific report on the capabilities and risks of advanced AI systems.

   SOURCES: Milafirst-party

6. Jun 3, 2025

   HE LAUNCHES LAWZERO TO MAKE AI SAFE BY DESIGN

   Bengio launched LawZero, a nonprofit research organization focused on developing safer approaches to advanced artificial intelligence.

   SOURCES: LawZerofirst-party