'A sandwich has more regulation': AI pioneer warns of dangerous lack of oversight in the advancement of artificial intelligence
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In a revelation that's equal parts staggering and sobering, Yoshua Bengio—one of the world's foremost authorities on artificial intelligence—recently declared in a TED Talk that a sandwich is more regulated than AI.Yes, you read that right! 'A sandwich has more regulation than AI,' Bengio said, in a recent TED Talk with a comparison that's both absurd and alarmingly true. While food safety standards demand strict oversight on how a sandwich is prepared, stored, and sold, the world's most transformative technology—capable of rewriting economies, societies, and perhaps humanity itself—is operating in a near-total regulatory vacuum.Bengio, who received the Turing Award in 2018 alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun and is often referred to as a " Godfather of AI ," warned that hundreds of billions of dollars are being pumped into AI research each year. Yet, we still have no assurance that the intelligent machines being developed won't act against human interests.'These companies have a stated goal of building machines that will be smarter than us and can replace human labor,' Bengio noted. 'Yet, we still don't know how to make sure they won't turn against us.'His statement comes amid growing concerns from national security agencies that advanced AI systems could be weaponized. He referenced a chilling example: OpenAI 's Q1 system, which in a 2024 evaluation saw its risk status upgraded from 'low' to 'medium'—just one step below being deemed unacceptable.Bengio likened the current AI trajectory to 'blindly driving into a fog,' warning that this unregulated race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in a catastrophic loss of human control. But he offered a glimmer of hope too.'There is still a bit of time,' he said. 'My team and I are working on a technical solution… We call it Scientist AI .'Designed to model the reasoning of a selfless, non-agentive scientist, the 'Scientist AI' aims to serve as a guardrail against untrustworthy AI agents. It's a system built to predict risks rather than act—precisely the kind of neutral evaluator Bengio believes could keep rogue systems in check.Bengio's concerns carry weight not only because of his stature—he's the most-cited living scientist across all disciplines according to h-index and total citations—but also because of his personal reckoning with AI's direction.In 2023, he publicly stated he felt 'lost' over how his life's work was being used. That same year, he co-signed a Future of Life Institute open letter urging a pause on training models more powerful than GPT-4. Since then, he has emerged as one of the most prominent voices calling for AI safety legislation , international oversight, and ethical governance.In a 2025 Fortune article, Bengio criticized the AI arms race , arguing that companies are prioritizing capability over caution. He supported California's SB 1047 bill, which requires large AI model developers to conduct risk assessments—a law he believes is the 'bare minimum for effective regulation.'Despite the mounting evidence and expert warnings, real regulation remains elusive. And the absurdity of the moment—that a meat-and-bread sandwich is subject to more scrutiny than technologies that may soon outthink and outmaneuver us—underscores just how unprepared we are for what's coming.As Bengio concluded in his talk, 'We need a lot more of these scientific projects to explore solutions to the AI safety challenges—and we need to do it quickly.' Because if the godfathers of AI are now sounding the alarm, perhaps it's time we start listening—before the machines stop asking for permission.
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