This is going to be a jam-packed posting with the AI experts at the Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) virtual panel, a look back at a ‘testy’ exchange between Yoshua Bengio (one of Canada’s godfathers of AI) and a former diplomat from China, an update on Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon and his latest AI push, and a missive from the BC artificial intelligence community.
A Canadian Science Policy Centre AI panel on November 11, 2025
The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) provides an October 9, 2025 update on an upcoming virtual panel being held on Remembrance Day,
[AI-Driven Misinformation Across Sectors Addressing a Cross-Societal Challenge]
Upcoming Virtual Panel[s]: November 11 [2025]
Artificial Intelligence is transforming how information is created and trusted, offering immense benefits across sectors like healthcare, education, finance, and public discourse—yet also amplifying risks such as misinformation, deepfakes, and scams that threaten public trust. This panel brings together experts from diverse fields [emphasis mine] to examine the manifestations and impacts of AI-driven misinformation and to discuss policy, regulatory, and technical solutions [emphasis mine]. The conversation will highlight practical measures—from digital literacy and content verification to platform accountability—aimed at strengthening resilience in Canada and globally.
For more information on the panel and to register, click below.
Odd timing for this event. Moving on, I found more information on the CSPC’s webpage for this event, Note: Unfortunately, links to the moderator’s and speakers’ bios could not be copied here,
Canadian Science Policy Centre Email info@sciencepolicy.ca
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This panel brings together cross-sectoral experts to examine how AI-driven misinformation manifests in their respective domains, its consequences, and how policy, regulation, and technical interventions can help mitigate harm. The discussion will explore practical pathways for action, such as digital literacy, risk audits, content verification technologies, platform responsibility, and regulatory frameworks. Attendees will leave with a nuanced understanding of both the risks and the resilience strategies being explored in Canada and globally.
Canada Research Chair in Internet & E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa See Bio
[Panelists]
Dr. Plinio Morita
Associate Professor / Director, Ubiquitous Health Technology Lab, University of Waterloo …
Dr. Nadia Naffi
Université Laval — Associate Professor of Educational Technology and expert on building human agency against AI-augmented disinformation and deepfakes. See Bio
Dr. Jutta Treviranus
Director, Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD U, Expert on AI misinformation in the Education sector and schools. See Bio
Dr. Fenwick McKelvey
Concordia University — Expert in political bots, information flows, and Canadian tech governance See Bio
Michael Geist has his own blog/website featuring posts on his ares of interest and featuring his podcast, Law Bytes. Jutta Treviranus is mentioned in my October 13, 2025 posting as a participant in “Who’s afraid of AI? Arts, Sciences, and the Futures of Intelligence,” a conference (October 23 – 24, 205) and arts festival at the University of Toronto (scroll down to find it) . She’s scheduled for a session on Thursday, October 23, 2025.
China, Canada, and the AI Action summit in February 2025
Zoe Kleinman’s February 10, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online website also notes the encounter,
A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by “AI Godfather” professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him.
Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China’s UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday [February 10, 2025].
The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.
Fu Ying began by thanking Canada’s Prof Bengio for the “very, very long” document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn’t finished reading it.
She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration.
The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending.
Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. [As of February 13, 2025, Mr. Musk did not attend the summit, which ended February 11, 2025.]
A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China’s DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.
The pair’s heated exchanges were a symbol of global political jostling in the powerful AI arms race, but Fu Ying also expressed regret about the negative impact of current hostilities between the US and China on the progress of AI safety.
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She gave a carefully-crafted glimpse behind the curtain of China’s AI scene, describing an “explosive period” of innovation since the country first published its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the west.
She added that “when the pace [of development] is rapid, risky stuff occurs” but did not elaborate on what might have taken place.
“The Chinese move faster [than the west] but it’s full of problems,” she said.
Fu Ying argued that building AI tools on foundations which are open source, meaning everyone can see how they work and therefore contribute to improving them, was the most effective way to make sure the tech did not cause harm.
Most of the US tech giants do not share the tech which drives their products.
Open source offers humans “better opportunities to detect and solve problems”, she said, adding that “the lack of transparency among the giants makes people nervous”.
But Prof Bengio disagreed.
His view was that open source also left the tech wide open for criminals to misuse.
He did however concede that “from a safety point of view”, it was easier to spot issues with the viral Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek, which was built using open source architecture, than ChatGPT, whose code has not been shared by its creator OpenAI.
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Interesting, non? You can read more about Bengio’s views in an October 1, 2025 article by Rae Witte for Futurism.
In a Policy Forum, Yue Zhu and colleagues provide an overview of China’s emerging regulation for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and its potential contributions to global AI governance. Open-source AI systems from China are rapidly expanding worldwide, even as the country’s regulatory framework remains in flux. In general, AI governance suffers from fragmented approaches, a lack of clarity, and difficulty reconciling innovation with risk management, making global coordination especially hard in the face of rising controversy. Although no official AI law has yet been enacted, experts in China have drafted two influential proposals – the Model AI Law and the AI Law (Scholar’s Proposal) – which serve as key references for ongoing policy discussions. As the nation’s lawmakers prepare to draft a consolidated AI law, Zhu et al. note that the decisions will shape not only China’s innovation, but also global collaboration on AI safety, openness, and risk mitigation. Here, the authors discuss China’s emerging AI regulation as structured around 6 pillars, which, combined, stress exemptive laws, efficient adjudication, and experimentalist requirements, while safeguarding against extreme risks. This framework seeks to balance responsible oversight with pragmatic openness, allowing developers to innovate for the long term and collaborate across the global research community. According to Zhu et al., despite the need for greater clarity, harmonization, and simplification, China’s evolving model is poised to shape future legislation and contribute meaningfully to global AI governance by promoting both safety and innovation at a time when international cooperation on extreme risks is urgently needed.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
China’s emerging regulation toward an open future for AI by Yue Zhu, Bo He, Hongyu Fu, Naying Hu, Shaoqing Wu, Taolue Zhang, Xinyi Liu, Gang Xu, Linghan Zhang, and Hui Zhou. Science 9 Oct 2025Vol 390, Issue 6769 pp. 132-135 DOI: 10.1126/science.ady7922
This paper is behind a paywall.
No mention of Fu Ying or China’s ‘The AI Development and Safety Network’ but perhaps that’s in the paper.
Canada and its Minister of AI and Digital Innovation
Evan Solomon (born April 20, 1968)[citation needed] is a Canadian politician and broadcaster who has been the minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation since May 2025. A member of the Liberal Party, Solomon was elected as the member of Parliament (MP) for Toronto Centre in the April 2025 election.
He was the host of The Evan Solomon Show on Toronto-area talk radio station CFRB,[2] and a writer for Maclean’s magazine. He was the host of CTV’s national political news programs Power Play and Question Period.[3] In October 2022, he moved to New York City to accept a position with the Eurasia Group as publisher of GZERO Media.[4] Solomon continued with CTV News as a “special correspondent” reporting on Canadian politics and global affairs.”[4]
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Had you asked me what background one needs to be a ‘Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation’, media would not have been my first thought. That said, sometimes people can surprise you.
Solomon appears to be an enthusiast if a June 10, 2025 article by Anja Karadeglija for The Canadian Press is to be believed,
Canada’s new minister of artificial intelligence said Tuesday [June 10, 2025] he’ll put less emphasis on AI regulation and more on finding ways to harness the technology’s economic benefits [emphases mine].
In his first speech since becoming Canada’s first-ever AI minister, Evan Solomon said Canada will move away from “over-indexing on warnings and regulation” to make sure the economy benefits from AI.
His regulatory focus will be on data protection and privacy, he told the audience at an event in Ottawa Tuesday morning organized by the think tank Canada 2020.
Solomon said regulation isn’t about finding “a saddle to throw on the bucking bronco called AI innovation. That’s hard. But it is to make sure that the horse doesn’t kick people in the face. And we need to protect people’s data and their privacy.”
The previous government introduced a privacy and AI regulation bill that targeted high-impact AI systems. It did not become law before the election was called.
That bill is “not gone, but we have to re-examine in this new environment where we’re going to be on that,” Solomon said.
He said constraints on AI have not worked at the international level.
“It’s really hard. There’s lots of leakages,” he said. “The United States and China have no desire to buy into any constraint or regulation.”
That doesn’t mean regulation won’t exist, he said, but it will have to be assembled in steps.
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Solomon’s comments follow a global shift among governments to focus on AI adoption and away from AI safety and governance.
The first global summit focusing on AI safety was held in 2023 as experts warned of the technology’s dangers — including the risk that it could pose an existential threat to humanity. At a global meeting in Korea last year, countries agreed to launch a network of publicly backed safety institutes.
But the mood had shifted by the time this year’s AI Action Summit began in Paris. …
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Solomon outlined several priorities for his ministry — scaling up Canada’s AI industry, driving adoption and ensuring Canadians have trust in and sovereignty over the technology.
He said that includes supporting Canadian AI companies like Cohere, which “means using government as essentially an industrial policy to champion our champions.”
The federal government is putting together a task force to guide its next steps on artificial intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon is promising an update to the government’s AI strategy.
Solomon told the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal on Wednesday [September 24, 2025] that the “refreshed” strategy will be tabled later this year, “almost two years ahead of schedule.”
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“We need to update and move quickly,” he said in a keynote speech at the start of the conference.
The task force will include about 20 representatives from industry, academia and civil society. The government says it won’t reveal the membership until later this week.
Solomon said task force members are being asked to consult with their networks, suggest “bold, practical” ideas and report back to him in November [2025].
The group will look at various topics related to AI, including research, adoption, commercialization, investment, infrastructure, skills, and safety and security. The government is also planning to solicit input from the public. [emphasis mine]
Canada was the first country to launch a national AI strategy [the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy announced in 2016], which the government updated in 2022. The strategy focuses on commercialization, the development and adoption of AI standards, talent and research.
Solomon also teased a “major quantum initiative” coming in October [2025?] to ensure both quantum computing talent and intellectual property stay in the country.
Solomon called digital sovereignty “the most pressing policy and democratic issue of our time” and stressed the importance of Canada having its own “digital economy that someone else can’t decide to turn off.”
Solomon said the federal government’s recent focus on major projects extends to artificial intelligence. He compared current conversations on Canada’s AI framework to the way earlier generations spoke about a national railroad or highway.
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He said his government will address concerns about AI by focusing on privacy reform and modernizing Canada’s 25-year-old privacy law.
“We’re going to include protections for consumers who are concerned about things like deep fakes and protection for children, because that’s a big, big issue. And we’re going to set clear standards for the use of data so innovators have clarity to unlock investment,” Solomon said.
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The government is consulting with the public? Experience suggests that when all the major decisions will have been made; the public consultation comments will mined so officials can make some minor, unimportant tweaks.
Canada’s AI Task Force and parts of the Empire Club talk are revealed in a September 26, 2025 article by Alex Riehl for BetaKit,
Inovia Capital partner Patrick Pichette, Cohere chief artificial intelligence (AI) officer Joelle Pineau, and Build Canada founder Dan Debow are among 26 members of AI minister Evan Solomon’s AI Strategy Task Force trusted to help the federal government renew its AI strategy.
Solomon revealed the roster, filled with leading Canadian researchers and business figures, while speaking at the Empire Club in Toronto on Friday morning [September 26, 2025]. He teased its formation at the ALL IN conference earlier this week [September 24, 2025], saying the team would include “innovative thinkers from across the country.”
The group will have 30 days to add to a collective consultation process in areas including research, talent, commercialization, safety, education, infrastructure, and security.
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The full AI Strategy Task Force is listed below; each member will consult their network on specific themes.
Research and Talent
Gail Murphy, professor of computer science and vice-president – research and innovation, University of British Columbia and vice-chair at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada
Diane Gutiw, VP – global AI research lead, CGI Canada and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
Michael Bowling, professor of computer science and principal investigator – Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, University of Alberta and research fellow, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and Canada CIFAR AI chair
Arvind Gupta, professor of computer science, University of Toronto
Adoption across industry and governments
Olivier Blais, co-founder and VP of AI, Moov and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
Cari Covent, technology executive
Dan Debow, chair of the board, Build Canada
Commercialization of AI
Louis Têtu, executive chairman, Coveo
Michael Serbinis, founder and CEO, League and board chair of the Perimeter Institute
Adam Keating, CEO and Founder, CoLab
Scaling our champions and attracting investment
Patrick Pichette, general partner, Inovia Capital
Ajay Agrawal, professor of strategic management, University of Toronto, founder, Next Canada and founder, Creative Destruction Lab
Sonia Sennik, CEO, Creative Destruction Lab
Ben Bergen, president, Council of Canadian Innovators
Building safe AI systems and public trust in AI
Mary Wells, dean of engineering, University of Waterloo
Joelle Pineau, chief AI officer, Cohere
Taylor Owen, founding director, Center [sic] for Media, Technology and Democracy [McGill University]
Education and Skills
Natiea Vinson, CEO, First Nations Technology Council
Alex Laplante, VP – cash management technology Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and board member at Mitacs
David Naylor, professor of medicine – University of Toronto
Infrastructure
Garth Gibson, chief technology and AI officer, VDURA
Ian Rae, president and CEO, Aptum
Marc Etienne Ouimette, chair of the board, Digital Moment and member, OECD One AI Group of Experts, affiliate researcher, sovereign AI, Cambridge University Bennett School of Public Policy
Security
Shelly Bruce, distinguished fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation
James Neufeld, founder and CEO, Samdesk
Sam Ramadori, co-president and executive director, LawZero
With files from Josh Scott
If you have the time, Riehl ‘s September 26, 2025 article offers more depth than may be apparent in the excerpts I’ve chosen.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Arvind Gupta’s name. I’m glad to see he’s part of this Task Force (Research and Talent). The man was treated quite shamefully at the University of British Columbia. (For the curious, this August 18, 2015 article by Ken MacQueen for Maclean’s Magazine presents a somewhat sanitized [in my opinion] review of the situation.)
One final comment, the experts on the virtual panel and members of Solomon’s Task Force are largely from Ontario and Québec. There is minor representation from others parts of the country but it is minor.
British Columbia wants entry into the national AI discussion
Just after I finished writing up this post, I received Kris Krug’s (techartist, quasi-sage, cyberpunk anti-hero from the future) October 14, 2025 communication (received via email) regarding an initiative from the BC + AI community,
Growth vs Guardrails: BC’s Framework for Steering AI
Our open letter to Minister Solomon shares what we’ve learned building community-led AI governance and how BC can help.
Ottawa created a Minister of Artificial Intelligence and just launched a national task force to shape the country’s next AI strategy. The conversation is happening right now about who gets compute, who sets the rules, and whose future this technology will serve.
Our new feature, Growth vs Guardrails [see link to letter below for ‘guardrails’], is already making the rounds in those rooms. The message is simple: if Ottawa’s foot is on the gas, BC is the steering wheel and the brakes. We can model a clean, ethical, community-led path that keeps power with people and place.
This is the time to show up together. Not as scattered voices, but as a connected movement with purpose, vision, and political gravity.
Over the past few months, almost 100 of us have joined as the new BC + AI Ecosystem Association non-profit as Founding Members. Builders. Artists. Researchers. Investors. Educators. Policymakers. People who believe that tech should serve communities, not the other way around.
Now we’re opening the door wider. Join and you’ll be part of the core group that built this from the ground up. Your membership is declaration that British Columbia deserves to shape its own AI future with ethics, creativity, and care.
If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, this is the time to lean in. We don’t do panels. We do portals. And this is the biggest one we’ve opened yet.
See you inside,
Kris Krüg Executive Director BC + AI Ecosystem Association kk@bc-ai.ca | bc-ai.ca
Canada just spun up a 30-day sprint to shape its next AI strategy. Minister Evan Solomon assembled 26 experts (mostly industry and academia) to advise on research, adoption, commercialization, safety, skills, and infrastructure.
On paper, it’s a pivot moment. In practice, it’s already drawing fire. Too much weight on scaling, not enough on governance. Too many boardrooms, not enough frontlines. Too much Ottawa, not enough ground truth.
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This is Canada’s chance to reset the DNA of its AI ecosystem.
But only if we choose regeneration over extraction, sovereign data governance over corporate capture, and community benefit over narrow interests.
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The Problem With The Task Force
Research says: The group’s stacked with expertise. But critics flag the imbalance. Where’s healthcare? Where’s civil society beyond token representation? Where are the people who’ll feel AI’s impact first: frontline workers, artists, community organizers?
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The worry:Commercialization and scaling overshadow public trust, governance, and equitable outcomes. Again.
The numbers back this up: Only 24% of Canadians have AI training. Just 38% feel confident in their knowledge. Nearly two-thirds see potential harm. 71% would trust AI more under public regulation.
We’re building a national strategy on a foundation of low literacy and eroding trust. That’s not a recipe for sovereignty. That’s a recipe for capture.
Principles for a National AI Strategy: What BC + AI Stands For
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit held from February 10 – 11, 2025 in Paris seems to have been pretty exciting, President Emanuel Macron announced a 09B euros investment in the French AI sector on February 10, 2025 (I have more in my February 13, 2025 posting [scroll down to the ‘What makes Canadian (and Greenlandic) minerals and water so important?’ subhead]). I also have this snippet, which suggests Macron is eager to provide an alternative to US domination in the field of AI, from a February 10, 2025 posting on CCGTN (China Global Television Network),
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday night [February 10, 2025] that France is set to receive a total investment of 109 billion euros (approximately $112 billion) in artificial intelligence over the coming years.
Speaking in a televised interview on public broadcaster France 2, Macron described the investment as “the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with ‘Stargate’.”
He noted that the funding will come from the United Arab Emirates, major American and Canadian investment funds [emphases mine], as well as French companies.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance that punishing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum will hurt his home state of Ohio, a senior Canadian official said.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of an international summit in Paris Tuesday [February 11, 2025], as the Trump administration moves forward with its threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from its biggest supplier, Canada, effective March 12.
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Speaking to reporters on Wednesday [February 12, 2025] as he departed from Brussels, Trudeau characterized the meeting as a brief chat that took place as the pair met.
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“It was just a quick greeting exchange,” Trudeau said. “I highlighted that $2.2 billion worth of steel and aluminum exports from Canada go directly into the Ohio economy, often to go into manufacturing there.
“He nodded, and noted it, but it wasn’t a longer exchange than that.”
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Vance didn’t respond to Canadian media’s questions about the tariffs while arriving at the summit on Tuesday [February 11, 2025].
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Additional insight can be gained from a February 10, 2025 PBS (US Public Broadcasting Service) posting of an AP (Associated Press) article with contributions from Kelvin Chan and Angela Charlton in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi,
JD Vance stepped onto the world stage this week for the first time as U.S. vice president, using a high-stakes AI summit in Paris and a security conference in Munich to amplify Donald Trump’s aggressive new approach to diplomacy.
The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.
The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards.
Macron also called on “simplifying” rules in France and the European Union to allow AI advances, citing sectors like healthcare, mobility, energy, and “resynchronize with the rest of the world.”
“We are most of the time too slow,” he said.
The summit underscores a three-way race for AI supremacy: Europe striving to regulate and invest, China expanding access through state-backed tech giants, and the U.S. under Trump prioritizing a hands-off approach.
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Vance has signaled he will use the Paris summit as a venue for candid discussions with world leaders on AI and geopolitics.
“I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly — bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there — and so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France,” Vance told Breitbart News.
Vance is expected to meet separately Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a person familiar with planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron in an effort to prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”
But the U.S.-China rivalry overshadowed broader international talks.
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The U.S.-China rivalry didn’t entirely overshadow the talks. At least one Chinese former diplomat chose to make her presence felt by chastising a Canadian academic according to a February 11, 2025 article by Matthew Broersma for silicon.co.uk
A representative of China at this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris stressed the importance of collaboration on artificial intelligence, while engaging in a testy exchange with Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic considered one of the “Godfathers” of AI.
Fu Ying, a former Chinese government official and now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the name of China’s official AI Development and Safety Network was intended to emphasise the importance of collaboration to manage the risks around AI.
She also said tensions between the US and China were impeding the ability to develop AI safely.
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… Fu Ying, a former vice minister of foreign affairs in China and the country’s former UK ambassador, took veiled jabs at Prof Bengio, who was also a member of the panel.
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Zoe Kleinman’s February 10, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online website also notes the encounter,
A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by “AI Godfather” professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him.
Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China’s UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday [February 10, 2025].
The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.
Fu Ying began by thanking Canada’s Prof Bengio for the “very, very long” document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn’t finished reading it.
She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration.
The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending.
Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. [As of February 13, 2025, Mr. Musk did not attend the summit, which ended February 11, 2025.]
A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China’s DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.
The pair’s heated exchanges were a symbol of global political jostling in the powerful AI arms race, but Fu Ying also expressed regret about the negative impact of current hostilities between the US and China on the progress of AI safety.
…
She gave a carefully-crafted glimpse behind the curtain of China’s AI scene, describing an “explosive period” of innovation since the country first published its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the west.
She added that “when the pace [of development] is rapid, risky stuff occurs” but did not elaborate on what might have taken place.
“The Chinese move faster [than the west] but it’s full of problems,” she said.
Fu Ying argued that building AI tools on foundations which are open source, meaning everyone can see how they work and therefore contribute to improving them, was the most effective way to make sure the tech did not cause harm.
Most of the US tech giants do not share the tech which drives their products.
Open source offers humans “better opportunities to detect and solve problems”, she said, adding that “the lack of transparency among the giants makes people nervous”.
But Prof Bengio disagreed.
His view was that open source also left the tech wide open for criminals to misuse.
He did however concede that “from a safety point of view”, it was easier to spot issues with the viral Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek, which was built using open source architecture, than ChatGPT, whose code has not been shared by its creator OpenAI.
Announced in November 2023 at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, England, and inspired by the workings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report consolidates leading international expertise on AI and its risks.
Supported by the United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Bengio, founder and scientific director of the UdeM-affiliated Mila – Quebec AI Institute, led a team of 96 international experts in drafting the report.
The experts were drawn from 30 countries, the U.N., the European Union and the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development]. Their report will help inform discussions next month at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France and serve as a global handbook on AI safety to help support policymakers.
Towards a common understanding
The most advanced AI systems in the world now have the ability to write increasingly sophisticated computer programs, identify cyber vulnerabilities, and perform on a par with human PhD-level experts on tests in biology, chemistry, and physics.
In what is identified as a key development for policymakers to monitor, the AI Safety Report published today warns that AI systems are also increasingly capable of acting as AI agents, autonomously planning and acting in pursuit of a goal.
As policymakers worldwide grapple with the rapid and unpredictable advancements in AI, the report contributes to bridging the gap by offering a scientific understanding of emerging risks to guide decision-making.
The document sets out the first comprehensive, independent, and shared scientific understanding of advanced AI systems and their risks, highlighting how quickly the technology has evolved.
Several areas require urgent research attention, according to the report, including how rapidly capabilities will advance, how general-purpose AI models work internally, and how they can be designed to behave reliably.
Three distinct categories of AI risks are identified:
Malicious use risks: these include cyberattacks, the creation of AI-generated child-sexual-abuse material, and even the development of biological weapons;
System malfunctions: these include bias, reliability issues, and the potential loss of control over advanced general-purpose AI systems;
Systemic risks: these stem from the widespread adoption of AI, include workforce disruption, privacy concerns, and environmental impacts.
The report places particular emphasis on the urgency of increasing transparency and understanding in AI decision-making as the systems become more sophisticated and the technology continues to develop at a rapid pace.
While there are still many challenges in mitigating the risks of general-purpose AI, the report highlights promising areas for future research and concludes that progress can be made.
Ultimately, it emphasizes that while AI capabilities could advance at varying speeds, their development and potential risks are not a foregone conclusion. The outcomes depend on the choices that societies and governments make today and in the future.
“The capabilities of general-purpose AI have increased rapidly in recent years and months,” said Bengio. “While this holds great potential for society, AI also presents significant risks that must be carefully managed by governments worldwide.
“This report by independent experts aims to facilitate constructive and evidence-based discussion around these risks and serves as a common basis for policymakers around the world to understand general-purpose AI capabilities, risks and possible mitigations.”
There have been two previous AI Safety Summits that I’m aware of and you can read about them in my May 21, 2024 posting about the one in Korea and in my November 2, 2023 posting about the first summit at Bletchley Park in the UK.
