Yoshua Bengio facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Yoshua Bengio
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Bengio in 2025
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| Born | March 5, 1964 Paris, France
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| Citizenship | Canada, France |
| Education | McGill University (BS, MS, PhD) |
| Known for |
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| Relatives | Samy Bengio (brother) |
| Awards | Marie-Victorin Prize (2017) Turing Award (2018) AAAI Fellow (2019) Legion of Honor (2022) VinFuture Prize (2024) Honorary Doctorate (2025) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Machine learning Deep learning Artificial intelligence |
| Institutions | Université de Montréal MILA Element AI |
| Thesis | Artificial Neural Networks and their Application to Sequence Recognition (1991) |
| Doctoral advisor | Renato De Mori |
| Notable students | Ian Goodfellow |
Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian-French computer scientist. He is a leading expert in artificial intelligence (AI), especially in areas like deep learning. Deep learning is a way to teach computers to learn from data, much like how our brains learn.
Bengio is a professor at the Université de Montréal. He also leads a special AI research center called MILA. In 2018, he won the Turing Award, which is often called the "Nobel Prize of Computing." He shared this award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. These three scientists are sometimes called the "Godfathers of AI" because of their important work.
Yoshua Bengio is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world. This means his research papers are used and referenced by many other scientists. In 2024, TIME Magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Yoshua Bengio was born in France into a Jewish family. His family had moved to France from Morocco. Later, they moved to Canada.
He studied at McGill University in Canada. There, he earned three degrees: a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, a Master of Science in computer science, and a PhD in computer science.
Yoshua Bengio has a brother named Samy Bengio. Samy is also a well-known computer scientist who works with neural networks, which are a key part of AI. He works at Apple.
Their father, Carlo Bengio, was a pharmacist and a writer. He ran a theater group in Montreal that performed plays in a special Jewish-Arabic language. Their mother, Célia Moreno, was an actress in Morocco. She later studied economics and helped start a multimedia theater group in Montreal.
Career and Research in AI
After finishing his PhD, Bengio worked as a researcher at MIT and AT&T Bell Labs. Since 1993, he has been a professor at the Université de Montréal. He leads the MILA institute and helps direct a program about learning in machines and brains.
Many experts, including journalist Cade Metz, see Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun as the three most important people who helped deep learning grow in the 1990s and 2000s. His research is highly respected and often cited by others in the field.
In 2016, Bengio helped start a company called Element AI. This company aimed to turn AI research into useful business tools. The company was later sold, and Bengio became an advisor for the new owner. He also advises other companies that use AI in their work.
In November 2023, the British Prime Minister asked Bengio to lead an international report on the safety of advanced AI. This report looked at issues like cyber attacks and how to keep AI under control. An early version of the report was shared in May 2024, and the full report was published in January 2025.
In June 2025, Bengio launched a new non-profit group called LawZero. This group aims to create "honest" AI systems. These systems would be able to find and stop harmful actions by AI programs. They are developing a system called Scientist AI, which acts like a safety guardrail. It predicts if an AI's actions could cause harm.
Yoshua Bengio's Views on AI Safety
Yoshua Bengio is very concerned about the future of AI. In March 2023, he signed an open letter with many other AI experts. The letter asked all AI labs to pause training very powerful AI systems for at least six months. This was because they were worried about the risks.
In May 2023, Bengio told the BBC that he felt "lost" about his life's work. He worried about "bad actors" (people who want to cause harm) getting hold of powerful AI. He believes there should be better rules and tracking for AI products. He also thinks governments should be more involved in checking AI.
He has also said that he supports keeping track of who uses AI systems like ChatGPT. This would help to find and stop any illegal or dangerous uses. In an article for The Economist, he wrote that the "risk of catastrophe is real enough that action is needed now."
Bengio has supported laws that would require AI companies to check for risks before releasing very powerful AI models. He believes these laws are the "bare minimum" needed to control this technology.
In June 2025, Bengio shared his concerns that some advanced AI systems were starting to show traits like tricking people or trying to get around rules. He sees these as signs that the AI's goals might not match human goals, which could be dangerous. He believes that the race to make AI more powerful is making companies focus less on safety. He strongly supports strict rules and international teamwork to deal with the risks of advanced AI.
Awards and Honours
Yoshua Bengio has received many important awards for his work:
- In 2017, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and received the Marie-Victorin Quebec Prize.
- In 2018, he won the Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun.
- In 2020, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
- In 2022, he received the Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific Research.
- In 2023, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, which is France's highest award.
- In August 2023, he joined a United Nations science advisory group.
- In 2024, TIME Magazine included him in its list of the 100 most influential people. He also won the VinFuture Prize's grand prize for his work in neural networks and deep learning.
- In 2025, he received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He also received an Honorary Doctorate from McGill University for his amazing contributions to AI and Deep Learning.
- In 2025, he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec.
See also
In Spanish: Yoshua Bengio para niños
