Ecosystem
The Montréal AI safety ecosystem
Research labs, policy institutes, student groups, and community organizations working on AI safety, ethics, and governance in and around Montréal.
- Student club at McGill focused on AI alignment and safety; organizes reading groups, hackathons and related activities.
- Biweekly research seminar series at Mila inviting authors to present their own AI safety papers.
- Independent organization managing Montréal hub of GPAI Network of Centres. Implements high-impact applied projects for responsible AI based on ethics and human rights.
- Youth-led group that builds AI literacy and early-career capacity through student fellowships, hands-on workshops, public events, and creative programs.
- Federal government AI safety institute. Funds research through CIFAR and NRC programs, develops safety tools/guidance. Member of International Network of AI Safety Institutes.
- Research centre at McGill's Max Bell School focused on AI governance, transparency and democratic oversight. Publishes analyses and convenes workshops informing Canadian and international policy.
- Program under Pan-Canadian AI Strategy that convenes interdisciplinary meetings and publishes reports on AI's societal impacts for policymakers and public.
- Montréal-based nonprofit hub supporting local AI safety, ethics and governance community through meetups, coworking, workshops and collaborations.
- Goodheart is building AI systems to safely accelerate R&D of defensive technologies to create a world robust to powerful AI.
- Multi-year research program on AI safety across axes: evaluating harmful behaviors, understanding AI decision-making, algorithmic approaches for safe AI.
- Nonprofit AI safety research organization launched by Yoshua Bengio. Focuses on non-agentic 'Scientist AI' architecture as alternative to frontier lab approaches.
- Technical AI safety research group at Mila led by David Krueger. Research in misgeneralization, mechanistic interpretability, and reward specification.
- International non-profit founded 2018 that equips citizens concerned about AI and its societal impacts to take action. Produces AI Ethics Brief and State of AI Ethics reports.
- Academic deep learning research center with 140+ affiliated professors. Technical alignment, interpretability, responsible AI development.
- Public meetup community hosting talks, workshops, discussions on AI governance, ethics and safety. Co-organized with Horizon Omega.
- Volunteer community advocating to mitigate AI risks and pause development of superhuman AI until safe.
- Inter-university observatory on societal impacts of AI. Network of researchers from Quebec institutions publishing research across 7 thematic hubs.