Davos 2025: Countries that invest in AI systems will have geopolitical advantage, says AI godfather Yoshua Bengio

Canadia computer scitentist, Yoshua Bengio, dubbed the godfather of AI, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 20

Countries that invest in building their artificial intelligence (AI) systems will have a geopolitical advantage in the future, said Canadian computer scientist and a pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning Yoshua Bengio.

Speaking to Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bengio said, "The countries that have their own AI systems, are likely to have a geo-political advantage in the future. So, we are seeing more and more countries willing to invest in their own autonomous systems."

Bengio's comments come in response to Moneycontrol's question on whether India should build its on foundational model or work on developing applications on top of existing models.

The AI pioneer's statement also comes at a time when the outgoing Biden administration has introduced restrictions on the export of AI technologies, including chips and models. Export to India including 140 other countries, is subject to restrictions beyond a certain threshold.

"That being said, the proliferation of very powerful AI systems which can be used as weapons, is also kind of dangerous. I think governments which decide to build their own systems, also need to work on international treaties to ensure that we do not do stupid things," Bengio added.

Dubbed as the Godfather of AI, Bengio also urged governments to incentivise for-profit companies to work on AI safety.

Bengio said, "The problem with the for-profit corporations is that they are in a commercial race. That race is around capabilities -- How good is the AI answering questions? It is not so much about safety. Yes, they should do it but the government has a responsibility to put the right incentives for this.

"For example, if the government asks the companies to show a strong safety case before they can deploy something or train something that will incentivise them very strongly to do more research on safety," he added.