AI arms race 'risks amplifying the existential dangers of superintelligence' An arms race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy, triggered by recent panic over Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, risks amplifying the existential dangers of superintelligence, according to one of the "godfathers" of AI.
Canadian machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, author of the first International AI Safety Report to be presented at an international AI summit in Paris next week, warns unchecked investment in computational power for AI without oversight is dangerous.
He's enthusiastic about its benefits for society, but the pivot away from AI regulation by Donald Trump's White House and frantic competition among big tech companies for more powerful AI models is a worrying shift.
He is in London, along with other AI pioneers to receive the Queen Elizabeth Prize, UK engineering's most prestigious award in recognition of AI and its potential.
But, he argues, rather than make the world less safe, the DeepSeek drama - where a Chinese company developed an AI to rival the best of America's big tech with a tenth of the computing power - demonstrates no one will dominate for long.
