Should we slow AI down?

Canadian voices

Two of the three Turing Award winners for deep learning built their careers in Canada. Both now say the technology they created could escape human control.

• Yoshua Bengio

  Université de Montréal and Mila. Turing Award. Chaired the International AI Safety Report.

  “Rogue AI may be dangerous for the whole of humanity. Banning powerful AI systems (say beyond the abilities of GPT-4) that are given autonomy and agency would be a good start.”

  “It's very hard, in terms of your ego and feeling good about what you do, to accept the idea that the thing you've been working on for decades might actually be very dangerous to humanity.”

  Further reading

  • His French FAQ on catastrophic AI risks · yoshuabengio.org
  • How rogue AIs may arise — his own account of changing his mind · yoshuabengio.org
  • The International AI Safety Report, which he chairs · International AI Safety Report
  • LawZero, the Montréal non-profit he founded · LawZero

• Geoffrey Hinton

  University of Toronto. Nobel Prize in Physics 2024. Turing Award.

  “It is inspiring to see Canadian parliamentarians on both sides of the aisle directly confront the risk posed by superintelligence. This is one of the defining challenges of our era, and it will shape the life of every Canadian citizen. It's about time we address it.”

  “If you take the existential risk seriously, as I now do, it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further.”

  “The research question is: how do you prevent them from ever wanting to take control? And nobody knows the answer.”

  Further reading

  • The one-sentence statement on extinction risk he signed · Center for AI Safety
  • More quotations · PauseAI

• David Krueger

  Mila and Université de Montréal. Founding CEO of Evitable.

  “To proceed towards superintelligent AI without any concrete plan to control it is completely unacceptable. Developers cannot currently comply with any effective regulation because they do not understand what they are building.”

  “AI is not inevitable.”

  Further reading

  • His blog, The Real AI · Substack
  • Evitable, the non-profit he founded · Evitable
  • The statement on extinction risk he signed · Center for AI Safety

• Wyatt Tessari L'Allié

  Founder and executive director, AI Governance & Safety Canada.

  “Certain AI capabilities pose an unacceptable risk because they could lead to dangerous weaponization or loss of control scenarios: systems that, without the instruction or authorization of their users, can detect and evade monitoring, rewrite their own code, make copies of themselves, spawn other AI systems, commandeer resources or refuse shutdown.”

  “What can we do in and from Canada to ensure that AI is safe and benefits everyone?”

  Further reading

  • His March 2026 testimony in full, from Hansard · openparliament.ca
  • AI Governance & Safety Canada, the organization he runs · AIGS Canada

• Gillian Hadfield

  Johns Hopkins, on leave from the University of Toronto. Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute.

  “Governments require the targets of regulation to purchase regulatory services from a government-licensed private regulator.”

  Further reading

  • Regulatory Markets: The Future of AI Governance · arXiv
  • An interview on building rules AI can actually follow · AIhub
  • Her profile at the Vector Institute · Vector Institute