Yoshua Bengio

Biography

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Yoshua Bengio is recognized worldwide as a leading expert in AI. He is most known for his pioneering work in deep learning, which earned him the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, “the Nobel Prize of computing,” with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun.

Bengio is a full professor at Université de Montréal, and the founder and scientific advisor of Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. He is also a senior fellow at CIFAR and co-directs its Learning in Machines & Brains program, serves as special advisor and founding scientific director of IVADO, and holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair.

In 2019, Bengio was awarded the prestigious Killam Prize and in 2022, he was the most cited computer scientist in the world by h-index. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Knight of the Legion of Honor of France and Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2023, he was appointed to the UN’s Scientific Advisory Board for Independent Advice on Breakthroughs in Science and Technology.

Concerned about the social impact of AI, Bengio helped draft the Montréal Declaration for the Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence and continues to raise awareness about the importance of mitigating the potentially catastrophic risks associated with future AI systems.

Current Students

Jamal Abou Haibeh

Collaborating Alumni - McGill University

Mohammed Abukalam

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

agassoussisalwane2@gmail.com

Salwane Agassoussi

Université de Montréal

Berkes Anaïs

Collaborating researcher - Cambridge University

Principal supervisor :

Rim Assouel

PhD - Université de Montréal

Ayoub Atanane

Collaborating Alumni - Université du Québec à Rimouski

Stefan Bauer

Independent visiting researcher

Co-supervisor :

Guillaume Lajoie

Paul Bertin

PhD - Université de Montréal

Ghait Boukachab

Collaborating Alumni - UQAR

Shahana Chatterjee

Collaborating researcher - N/A

Principal supervisor :

Xiaoyin Chen

PhD - Université de Montréal

Sanghyeok Choi

Collaborating researcher - KAIST

PhD - Université de Montréal

PhD - Université de Montréal

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Eric Elmoznino

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Léna Ezzine

PhD - Université de Montréal

Jean-Pierre Falet

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Leo Feng

PhD - Université de Montréal

Research Intern - Université de Montréal

Ivan Grega

Research Intern - Université de Montréal

Pietro Greiner

PhD

Mohsin Hasan

PhD - Université de Montréal

mohsin.hasan@mila.quebec

Edward Hu

PhD - Université de Montréal

Moksh Jain

PhD - Université de Montréal

moksh.jain@mila.quebec

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Minsu Kim

Research Intern - Université de Montréal

Hyeonah Kim

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Alex Hernandez

Yaroslav KIVVA

Collaborating researcher - Université de Montréal

Michał Koziarski

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Salem Lahlou

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Seanie Lee

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Collaborating Alumni

Zhen Liu

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Liam Paull

Kanika Madan

PhD - Université de Montréal

Mohammed Mahfoud

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Nikolay Malkin

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Cristian Dragos Manta

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Dhanya Sridhar

Sören Mindermann

Collaborating researcher - Université de Montréal

Sarthak Mittal

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Independent visiting researcher - Université de Montréal

Padideh Nouri

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Ali Parviz

Collaborating researcher - Ying Wu Coll of Computing

Lena Podina

PhD - University of Waterloo

Principal supervisor :

Nassim Rahaman

Collaborating Alumni - Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

PhD - Université de Montréal

Danyal REHMAN

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

James Requeima

Independent visiting researcher - Université de Montréal

Oli RICHARDSON

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Camille Rochefort-Boulanger

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Julie Hussin

Victor Schmidt

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Marcin Sendera

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Vedant Shah

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Postdoctorate

Marco Stock

Independent visiting researcher - Technical University of Munich

marco.stock@tum.de

Mélisande Astrid Crystal Teng

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Collaborating researcher - RWTH Aachen University (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen)

Principal supervisor :

alexander.tong@mila.quebec

Alex Tong

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Collaborating researcher - Université de Montréal

Zichao Yan

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Omar G. Younis

Collaborating researcher

Collaborating researcher - KAIST

Nicole Zhang

PhD - McGill University

Principal supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Aaron Courville

Tianyu Zhang

PhD - Université de Montréal

Skipper: Combining Spatial and Temporal Abstraction for Better Generalization

Harry Zhao

PhD - McGill University

Principal supervisor :

Blog Posts

Generic thumbnail for Mila Blog articles.

February 22, 2024

Mingde Harry Zhao

Safa Alver

Harm van Seijen

Romain Laroche

Doina Precup

Yoshua Bengio

Scaling in the Service of Reasoning & Model-Based ML

April 4, 2023

Yoshua Bengio

Edward J. Hu

A collaboration between Mila and Relation Therapeutics to discover novel synergistic combinations of drugs in vitro

March 23, 2022

Paul Bertin

Jake P. Taylor-King

Yoshua Bengio

March 15, 2022

Generative Flow Networks

Yoshua Bengio

Publications

Regulating advanced artificial agents

Michael K. Cohen

Noam Kolt

Gillian K. Hadfield

Stuart Russell

Governance frameworks should address the prospect of AI systems that cannot be safely tested Technical experts and policy-makers have increa… (see more)singly emphasized the need to address extinction risk from artificial intelligence (AI) systems that might circumvent safeguards and thwart attempts to control them (1). Reinforcement learning (RL) agents that plan over a long time horizon far more effectively than humans present particular risks. Giving an advanced AI system the objective to maximize its reward and, at some point, withholding reward from it, strongly incentivizes the AI system to take humans out of the loop, if it has the opportunity. The incentive to deceive humans and thwart human control arises not only for RL agents but for long-term planning agents (LTPAs) more generally. Because empirical testing of sufficiently capable LTPAs is unlikely to uncover these dangerous tendencies, our core regulatory proposal is simple: Developers should not be permitted to build sufficiently capable LTPAs, and the resources required to build them should be subject to stringent controls.

2024-04-05

Science (published)

Regulating advanced artificial agents

Michael K. Cohen

Noam Kolt

Gillian K. Hadfield

Stuart Russell

2024-04-05

Science (published)

Regulating advanced artificial agents

Michael K. Cohen

Noam Kolt

Gillian K. Hadfield

Stuart Russell

2024-04-05

Science (published)

Language Models Can Reduce Asymmetry in Information Markets

Nasim Rahaman

Martin Weiss

Manuel Wüthrich

Erran L. Li

Chris Pal

Bernhard Schölkopf

2024-03-21

ArXiv (preprint)

Language Models Can Reduce Asymmetry in Information Markets

Nasim Rahaman

Martin Weiss

Manuel Wüthrich

Erran L. Li

Chris Pal

Bernhard Schölkopf

This work addresses the buyer's inspection paradox for information markets. The paradox is that buyers need to access information to determi… (see more)ne its value, while sellers need to limit access to prevent theft. To study this, we introduce an open-source simulated digital marketplace where intelligent agents, powered by language models, buy and sell information on behalf of external participants. The central mechanism enabling this marketplace is the agents' dual capabilities: they not only have the capacity to assess the quality of privileged information but also come equipped with the ability to forget. This ability to induce amnesia allows vendors to grant temporary access to proprietary information, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized retention while enabling agents to accurately gauge the information's relevance to specific queries or tasks. To perform well, agents must make rational decisions, strategically explore the marketplace through generated sub-queries, and synthesize answers from purchased information. Concretely, our experiments (a) uncover biases in language models leading to irrational behavior and evaluate techniques to mitigate these biases, (b) investigate how price affects demand in the context of informational goods, and (c) show that inspection and higher budgets both lead to higher quality outcomes.

2024-03-21

ArXiv (preprint)

Language Models Can Reduce Asymmetry in Information Markets

Nasim Rahaman

Martin Weiss

Manuel Wüthrich

Erran L. Li

Chris Pal

Bernhard Schölkopf

2024-03-21

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and Generalizing Flow-Based Generative Models with Minibatch Optimal Transport

Alexander Tong

Nikolay Malkin

Guillaume Huguet

Yanlei Zhang

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Kilian FATRAS

Guy Wolf

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized \textit{conditional flow matching} (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, OT-CFM is the first method to compute dynamic OT in a simulation-free way. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schrödinger bridge inference.

2024-03-11

TMLR (accepted)

Integrating Generative and Experimental Platforms or Biomolecular Design

Cheng-Hao Liu

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Jason Yim

Soojung Yang

Sidney Lisanza

Francesca-Zhoufan Li

Pranam Chatterjee

Tommi Jaakkola

Regina Barzilay

David Baker

Frances H. Arnold

2024-03-08

ICLR.cc/2024/Workshop_Proposals (published)

Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning: Fostering the Maturity of ML Applications for Climate Change

Shiva Madadkhani

Olivia Mendivil Ramos

Millie Chapman

Jesse Dunietz

Arthur Ouaknine

2024-03-08

ICLR.cc/2024/Workshop_Proposals (published)

Machine learning and information theory concepts towards an AI Mathematician

Nikolay Malkin

The current state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence is impressive, especially in terms of mastery of language, but not so much in terms … (see more)of mathematical reasoning. What could be missing? Can we learn something useful about that gap from how the brains of mathematicians go about their craft? This essay builds on the idea that current deep learning mostly succeeds at system 1 abilities -- which correspond to our intuition and habitual behaviors -- but still lacks something important regarding system 2 abilities -- which include reasoning and robust uncertainty estimation. It takes an information-theoretical posture to ask questions about what constitutes an interesting mathematical statement, which could guide future work in crafting an AI mathematician. The focus is not on proving a given theorem but on discovering new and interesting conjectures. The central hypothesis is that a desirable body of theorems better summarizes the set of all provable statements, for example by having a small description length while at the same time being close (in terms of number of derivation steps) to many provable statements.

2024-03-07

ArXiv (preprint)

Machine learning and information theory concepts towards an AI Mathematician

Nikolay Malkin

The current state of the art in artificial intelligence is impressive, especially in terms of mastery of language, but not so much in terms … (see more)of mathematical reasoning. What could be missing? Can we learn something useful about that gap from how the brains of mathematicians go about their craft? This essay builds on the idea that current deep learning mostly succeeds at system 1 abilities—which correspond to our intuition and habitual behaviors—but still lacks something important regarding system 2 abilities—which include reasoning and robust uncertainty estimation. It takes an information-theoretical posture to ask questions about what constitutes an interesting mathematical statement, which could guide future work in crafting an AI mathematician. The focus is not on proving a given theorem but on discovering new and interesting conjectures. The central hypothesis is that a desirable body of theorems better summarizes the set of all provable statements, for example, by having a small description length while at the same time being close (in terms of number of derivation steps) to many provable statements.

2024-03-07

ArXiv (preprint)

Efficient Causal Graph Discovery Using Large Language Models

Thomas Jiralerspong

Xiaoyin Chen

Yash More

Vedant Shah

2024-03-05

ICLR.cc/2024/Workshop/AGI (poster)