Story perspectives

Canada and Germany Pledge Up to C$300M for LawZero AI

By Drooid · Sep 16, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC · How we work

Summary

Story summary

Canada and Germany pledged up to C$300 million (£160 million) for Yoshua Bengio’s LawZero nonprofit to develop safe AI systems.
Forty-two fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society issued an open letter calling the AI development pace an emergency.
U.S. President Donald Trump rejected a slowdown, insisting the United States must keep its AI lead over China.

History

Historical Context

When OpenAI announced its 2015 nonprofit launch with a pledged $1 billion, only $133 million had arrived by 2021, prompting a 2019 shift to a capped-profit model and massive Microsoft investment. The 2025 Trump-backed Stargate venture, aiming for up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure, revives earlier debates on rapid AI advancement versus safety, echoing the 2023 open-letter call by 20,000 scientists.

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Story summary

Canada and Germany pledged up to C$300 million (£160 million) for Yoshua Bengio’s LawZero nonprofit to develop safe AI systems.
Forty-two fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society issued an open letter calling the AI development pace an emergency.
U.S. President Donald Trump rejected a slowdown, insisting the United States must keep its AI lead over China.

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