Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the Université de Montréal and scientific director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, was awarded the Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering this week. Bengio is a pioneer in artificial intelligence and is known as the “godfather of AI” for his breakthrough work in artificial neural networks and deep learning. He has also been vocal about the potential risks of AI technology and called for prompt and rigorous regulation of the field. In this interview, Bengio discussed his achievements in the field of AI, such as his 2000 paper on neural networks for modelling language, and his hopes and concerns for the future.