Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian machine-learning researcher and a pioneer of deep learning. As of this article’s review on September 20, 2026, he is a professor at Université de Montréal and founder and scientific adviser of Mila.
Scientific contributions
Bengio contributed to deep-learning and representation-learning methods and shared the 2018 Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun.
Focus on AI safety
He has shifted much of his work toward the safety and governance of advanced systems and has contributed to international risk reports and initiatives.
Controversies and public debate
Bengio’s calls to slow the development of the most powerful systems or prevent superintelligence until adequate safeguards exist have drawn objections from researchers who argue that restrictions could hinder innovation or entrench large institutions. The dispute concerns risk estimates and policy, not alleged personal misconduct.