Claim · 2024-07-09 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Bengio's post of 9 July 2024 answers the argument that corporations would prefer to build safe AI by stating that the problem arises when safety and profit maximisation are not aligned, citing fossil-fuel and drug companies, and that global risks are an externality for developers.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously → contests → Economic incentives will produce safety

Where it appears

Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI →

Claim and evidence

Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriouslycontests ↓Economic incentives will produce safety

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 2024-07-09 · publication Records dated 2024 →
Role: Contesting
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Engagement: Engages a premise. States the incentive argument as a question and answers it with the externality of global risks.

Scope and limitsThe historical analogies are the author's; the post does not analyse AI developers' incentives empirically.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously

Author's blog (yoshuabengio.org) · 2024-07-09

Archived copy, captured 2024-07-09: Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“Shouldn't corporations prefer safe AI? The problem comes when safety and profit maximization or company culture ("move fast and break things") are not aligned.”

Location in source Section on the argument that engineers will only design well-behaving AIs

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Yoshua Bengio
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 061559ecadb381ae005f6ca5ec2904200c35fa017592f40da91558ca372e60b2). Current page; its metadata gives datePublished 2024-07-09 and dateModified 2025-12-03, and the page shows no revision note, so later edits cannot be excluded. The cross-family check retrieved it again on 2026-10-31, with the same bytes. The cross-family check of 2026-10-31 found the sampled passages on evidence and on open-sourcing in the capture of 9 July 2024, at the post's earlier address; nearby wording differs, so the whole page is not identical.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Archive copy: Open archived copy, captured 2024-07-09: Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously. Captured on the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2024-07-09. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-29.
Attribution: Yoshua Bengio, “Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously”, 2024-07-09.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (24 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document disputes the proposition or a premise it depends on. The record documents the text’s position, not who is right.

Date. Date of posting.

Record ID rd-r17-bengio-2024-reasoning-arguments