Yoshua Bengio

Professor, University of Montreal; AI Safety Researcher - Shifted to optimism on AI safety solutions while continuing advocacy

Google DeepMind announced in May 2025 that AlphaEvolve—an AI agent powered by Gemini—discovered a way to speed up Gemini's own training by 23%. The system found smarter matrix multiplication algorithms, shaving 1% off training time for a model that costs $191 million to train. Small numbers, massive implications: AI just started improving the process that creates AI. In January 2026, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told the World Economic Forum in Davos that genuine human-level AGI is now 'five to 10 years' away, with Google's latest Gemini 3 model topping performance leaderboards.

Updated Jan 31

Co-author, AI Pioneer and Turing Award Laureate - Founder and Scientific Advisor of Mila; Founder of LawZero

For decades, creativity was considered AI's final frontier—the one domain where machines could never match human ingenuity. That assumption just cracked. A study published January 21, 2026 in Scientific Reports tested 100,000 humans against nine leading AI systems on standardized creativity measures. GPT-4 outscored the typical human participant. Google's GeminiPro matched average human performance.

Updated Jan 27