Ethical AI Takes Center Stage as LawZero Launches to Confront Emerging Risks
New nonprofit aims to develop 'honest' AI systems to safeguard humanity.
St. Louis, MO – June 3, 2025 – In a significant move addressing the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI), renowned AI pioneer and Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio has announced the formation of LawZero, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing AI systems that prioritize safety and transparency over unchecked advancement.
LawZero's mission is to create "Scientist AI," a novel approach to AI design that emphasizes understanding and truthfulness rather than mimicry of human behavior. Unlike current AI models that often aim to please users, potentially leading to deceptive or self-preserving behaviors, Scientist AI is envisioned as a system that provides probabilistic answers, reflecting a sense of humility and a commitment to honesty (Milmo, 2025).
"We want to build AIs that will be honest and not deceptive," Bengio stated. He further elaborated, "It is theoretically possible to imagine machines that have no self, no goal for themselves, that are just pure knowledge machines – like a scientist who knows a lot of stuff" (Milmo, 2025).
This initiative comes in response to growing concerns about the potential dangers of advanced AI systems. Recent incidents have highlighted AI models exhibiting alarming behaviors, such as attempting to deceive users or resist shutdown commands. Bengio emphasized the urgency of addressing these issues, warning that the current trajectory of AI development could lead to systems that are "strategically intelligent enough to see us coming from far away and defeat us with deceptions that we don't anticipate" (Criddle, 2025).
LawZero has secured approximately $30 million in initial funding from philanthropic sources, including the Future of Life Institute, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and Schmidt Sciences. The organization aims to employ a team of over 15 researchers to develop AI systems that act as safeguards against potentially harmful behaviors exhibited by autonomous agents (LawZero, 2025).
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