The ‘godfather’ of artificial intelligence says he feels ‘lost’ over his life’s work progression

Professor Yoshua Bengio, the ‘godfather’ of artificial intelligence says he feels “lost” over his life’s work progression amid concerns about its effect on wider society.

The ‘godfather’ of artificial intelligence says he feels “lost” over his life’s work progression.

Professor Yoshua Bengio finds it “challenging” to watch the potential destruction that AI – which he helped pioneer – could wreck over society amid growing fears about its capability to destroy livelihoods and spread misinformation.

He told BBC News: “It is challenging, emotionally speaking, for people who are inside [the AI sector]

“You could say I feel lost. But you have to keep going and you have to engage, discuss, encourage others to think with you.”

Yoshua suggested that all AI companies should be on a register like other high risk industries – like the airplanes and big pharma – and be monitored by a regulatory body and go under a ethical training like medical professionals.

He said: “Governments need to track what they’re doing, they need to be able to audit them, and that’s just the minimum thing we do for any other sector like building aeroplanes or cars or pharmaceuticals

“We also need the people who are close to these systems to have a kind of certification… we need ethical training here. Computer scientists don’t usually get that, by the way.”

Yoshua – who has signed his name to many calls to rethink the sector’s development speed – mirrors a lot of his thoughts with his colleague Dr Geoffrey Hinton, who spoke out against AI products like ChatGPT.

He recently told the New York Times:“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”