Yoshua Bengio is the founder and head of the Institute for Learning Algorithms at the Canadian University of Montreal. Bengio is renowned for his groundbreaking work on neural networks and deep learning methodology. In 2018, he was awarded the Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.”
Along with Hinton and LeCun, Bengio is often called one of the “fathers of deep learning.” It is no surprise that his opinions are highly regarded. Bengio is among the public signatories of the open letter “Right to Warn,” created by leading AI researchers at OpenAI, where they claim they are being silenced about the dangers of technology.
In an interview with CNBC, Bengio stated that members of an “elite tech fringe group” want AI to replace humans. “Intelligence gives power. Who will control this power?” he asked during the One Young World Summit in Montreal. This summit aims to discuss innovative solutions for urgent global challenges, such as sustainable development, gender equality, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence, to accelerate the necessary societal changes.
“There are people who want to misuse this power, and there are people who would be happy if humanity were replaced by machines,” Bengio said. “I mean, this is a fringe, but these people can have a lot of power, and they can do it if we don’t put the right safeguards in place immediately.”
According to Bengio, the financial strength required for developing AI systems, which costs billions of dollars, cannot be ignored. Currently, “only very few organizations and countries” have the capability. This situation already indicates a dominance.
“There will be a concentration of power: economic power, which can be bad for markets; political power, which could be bad for democracy; and military power, which could be bad for the geopolitical stability of our planet,” Bengio outlines a bleak future.
Although there is currently disagreement over whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) or human-level AI can ever be achieved, Bengio warns that if it happens before global politics catches up, “we are in trouble.” “If it happens in five years, we are not ready,” he concluded, “because we do not have methods to ensure these systems do not harm humans or turn against them.”