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Yoshua Bengio portrait

Researcher · Academic · Founder · Executive

Yoshua Bengio

Université de MontréalFull ProfessorLawZeroCo-President and Scientific DirectorMilaFounder and Scientific Advisor

🇨🇦 CanadianBorn 1964

At a glance

Bengio’s 2003 neural language model helped lay the foundations of language AI. His group introduced attention, which lets models focus on relevant input, and GANs, which generate images. Attention paved the way for Transformer models behind ChatGPT. He shared the 2018 Turing Award with Hinton and LeCun and co-leads LawZero, which aims to build safer AI.

More

Bengio says he turned toward AI safety in 2023. Announcing LawZero in June 2025, he said it would “prioritize safety over commercial imperatives,” citing concerns about AI deception and the risk of losing human control.[1]

His proposed Scientist AI would explain and predict the world without pursuing goals of its own. It could check whether other AI systems’ actions might cause harm. LawZero’s July 2026 safety argument rests on assumptions, rather than guaranteeing safety.[2]

Career & education

Current roles
1993-present
Full Professor
2025-present
Co-President and Scientific Director
1993-present
Founder and Scientific Advisor
Previously
2016-2020
Co-founder
1992-1993
Postdoc, ML researcher
1991-1992
Postdoc, ML researcher
Education

Work and education history is primarily focused on AI-relevant roles and may not be comprehensive.

Citation Trend

Total citations to scholarly work, including research papers, technical reports, books and theses, as recorded by Google Scholar. Each point is a dated snapshot.
11 snapshots
Citation history from Aug 25, '25 to Oct 1, '261,164,4071,067,300970,193Aug 252025Apr 152026Jul 12026Oct 12026
citations1,164,407As of Oct 1, '26
citations+15,295Since last snapshot, Sep 1, '26
For today’s citation count and per work, visit Google Scholar.

Selected contributions

References

  1. Yoshua Bengio — Introducing LawZero, June 3, 2025yoshuabengio.org

    Turning toward AI safety

  2. LawZero — Scientist AI safety case, July 2, 2026lawzero.org

    Scientist AI

About this profile

Based on public sources. If accuracy is important, verify details using the links or references.

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Reviewed July 23, 2026 · Checked for accuracy and new information.

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