Yoshua Bengio Launches LawZero: A New Nonprofit Advancing Safe-by-Design AI

Summary

Montréal, QC - June 3, 2025 - Yoshua Bengio, the most-cited artificial intelligence (AI) researcher in the world and A.M. Turing Award winner, today announced the launch of LawZero, a new nonprofit organization committed to advancing research and developing technical solutions for safe-by-design AI systems. LawZero is assembling a world-class team of AI researchers who are building the next generation of AI systems in an environment dedicated to prioritizing safety over commercial imperatives. The organization was founded in response to evidence that today’s frontier AI models are developing dangerous capabilities and behaviours, including deception, self-preservation, and goal misalignment. LawZero’s work will help to unlock the immense potential of AI in ways that reduce the likelihood of a range of known dangers associated with today’s systems, including algorithmic bias, intentional misuse, and loss of human control. LawZero is structured as a nonprofit organization to ensure it is insulated from market and government pressures, which risk compromising AI safety. The organization is also pulling together a seasoned leadership team to drive this ambitious mission forward. “LawZero is the result of the new scientific direction I undertook in 2023, after recognizing the rapid progress made by private labs toward Artificial General Intelligence and beyond, as well as its profound implications for humanity,” said Yoshua Bengio, President and Scientific Director at LawZero. “Current frontier systems are already showing signs of self-preservation and deceptive behaviours, and this will only accelerate as their capabilities and degree of agency increase. LawZero is my team’s constructive response to these challenges. It’s an approach to AI that is not only powerful but also fundamentally safe. At LawZero, we believe that at the heart of every AI frontier system, there should be one guiding principle above all: The protection of human joy and endeavour.”Scientist AI: a n...