The Interview15 Jun 2025

Yoshua Bengio: AI’s risks must be acknowledged

James Copnall, presenter of the BBC’s Newsday, speaks to Yoshua Bengio, the world-renowned computer scientist often described as one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, or AI.

Bengio is a professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, founder of the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute - and recipient of an A.M. Turing Award, “the Nobel Prize of Computing”.

AI allows computers to operate in a way that can seem human, by using programmes that learn vast amounts of data and follow complex instructions. Big tech firms and governments have invested billions of dollars in the development of artificial intelligence, thanks to its potential to increase efficiency, cut costs and support innovation.

Bengio believes there are risks in AI models that attempt to mimic human behaviour with all its flaws. For example, recent experiments have shown how some AI models are developing the capacity to deceive and even blackmail humans, in a quest for their self-preservation.

Instead, he says AI must be safe, scientific and working to understand humans without copying them. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service, Mondays and Wednesdays at 0700 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out twice a week on BBC Sounds, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: James Copnall Producers: Lucy Sheppard, Ben Cooper Editor: Nick Holland

Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.

(Image: Yoshua Bengio. Credit: Craig Barritt/Getty)

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