Yoshua Bengio

I think that there are ways that we can improve our chances.

Despair is not going to solve the problem.

There are things that can be done.

We can work on technical solutions.

That's what I'm spending a large fraction of my time.

And we can work on policy and public awareness and societal solutions.

And that's the other part of what I'm doing, right?

Let's say that something catastrophic would happen and you think there's nothing to be done.

But actually, there's maybe nothing that we know right now that gives us a guarantee that we can solve the problem.

But maybe we can go from 20% chance of catastrophic outcome to 10%.

Well, that would be worth it.

Anything any one of us can do to move the needle towards greater chances of...

a good future for our children, we should do.

So one analogy that people use is we might be creating a new form of life that could be smarter than us.

And we're not sure if we'll be able to make sure it doesn't harm us, that we'll control it.

So it would be like creating a new species that could decide to do good things or bad things with us.

So that's one analogy, but obviously it's not biological life.

Does that matter?

In my scientific view, no.

I don't care about the definition one chooses for some system.