Yoshua Bengio: Why and how to regulate Frontier AI?

Abstract: Opinions differ on the horizon but a majority of ML researchers believe that we are on track to achieve human-level AI across most cognitive tasks. What are the different risks associated with these future advances and how can we evaluate and mitigate them? The author is chairing the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI which seeks to synthesize the scientific literature on this subject and inform policy-makers. In this context, regulation seems necessary to protect the public against these risks, to prevent economically expensive backlash against the technology in case of accidents, to level the playing field and not reward the least safety-conscious AI labs. The challenge is that AI methods are advancing rapidly and that the science of AI safety is still nascent and lacks answers about how to provide strong safety assurances. We will discuss why this calls for regulation that is future-proof and not prescribing particular evaluation and mitigation methodologies but incentivizing corporations to invest more in the required R&D.

Bio: Yoshua Bengio is Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at U. Montreal, as well as the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila and the Scientific Director of IVADO. He also holds the Canada CIFAR AI Chair. He is one of the world's leading experts in artificial intelligence and deep learning. In 2018, he received the A.M. Turing Award, which is considered the "Nobel prize of computing." He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and Canada, an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Knight of the Legion of Honor of France, and a member of the UN's Scientific Advisory Board for Independent Advice on Breakthroughs in Science and Technology. Concerned about the social impact of AI, he actively contributed to the Montreal Declaration for the Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence and now devotes himself to reducing the catastrophic risks of future AI, currently chairing the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI.