Electronic surveillance

'Big Brother': AI pioneer fears China's use of technology for surveillance and control

A computer scientist who is known as a pioneer in artificial intelligence is sounding the alarm about its potential for misuse by China — joining privacy advocates and technologists who have expressed similar concerns.

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist and co-founder of Montreal-based AI software company Element AI, said he was fearful about the technology being deployed to surveil and control people.

"This is the '1984' Big Brother scenario," he told Bloomberg in an interview, referencing George Orwell's dystopian novel that was published in 1949. "I think it's becoming more and more scary."

Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, is considered a leading thinker in the AI space because of his work in deep learning.