Canada is investing $150 million in LawZero, the Montreal-based non-profit founded by Yoshua Bengio, to develop a new form of safe AI designed to focus on objective truths and avoid pursuing goals of its own. Germany is providing an additional €100 million, a combined investment described in the announcement as more than a quarter‑billion dollars and linked to efforts to build so‑called Scientist AI and other safety‑oriented models.
Safe AI by design
LawZero, launched by Bengio last year, will use the new funding to develop models that are “safe by design,” intended to understand facts without seeking to please users or pursue independent goals and to act as a potential guardrail for other AI systems. The federal government’s $150 million is the first time it has provided funding to the organization.
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Soloman said the investment in LawZero is part of Canada’s larger push for responsible AI development and added: “We are here today not because we are responding to yesterday’s headline, but because we are responding to the philosophic position that we have taken, which is to build responsibly and safely.”
Bengio framed the effort in personal terms at a major AI gathering in Montreal: “I’m doing this with the urgency that I feel in my bones, because I want my children and my grandchildren to have a future,” he said.
Context and concerns
The announcement comes amid growing public concern about AI risks. The source article notes that an outgoing researcher at Anthropic warned there is a chance AI could wipe out humanity in the next decade, and that Prime Minister Mark Carney called in an interview for a global, non‑industry body to oversee and mitigate AI risks.
Experts quoted in the announcement warned that challenges such as AI hallucinations, misinformation and systems acting without explicit human permission will be difficult to curb. “There’s no silver bullet to this problem right now. We have very powerful, even transformative, AI systems,” said Jaxson Khan, an expert in AI policy and adoption at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. He added that Canada currently feels it may have limited control over AI: “Canada’s at this moment where we’re feeling like perhaps, in the context of AI, we don’t have a lot of control.”
Khan said partnering with Germany and investing in alternatives that are safer by design is meaningful: “I’m curious to see if that will work, but I do think it’s a worthwhile investment from the government and a good partnership with Germany.”
Domestic capacity and international partnerships
The funding announcement also came hours after two AI companies, Canada’s Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha, signed a merger agreement. Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute think tank, called the merger “arguably capacity building” and said, “We do have capacity to catch up and build alternatives. We also have to believe that.” She added, “We can’t … fall victim to the inevitability of the technology or its harms.”
Observers in the report suggested that a multipronged approach — building domestic capacity, creating safer models and partnering with like‑minded countries — could make a difference, though no certainty was claimed about outcomes.
The announcement frames the joint Canada‑Germany investment as part of a broader strategy to develop sovereign AI capability and safer AI systems, while voices quoted in the coverage stressed both urgency and the difficulty of fully addressing AI risks.
