Archive

Discussion of section 2.1 of the International AI Safety Report (January 2025) on risks from malicious use. Part of the AIGS Canada network.

Orpheus presents the core ideas from "Towards Guaranteed Safe AI: A Framework for Ensuring Robust and Reliable AI Systems" (arxiv.org/abs/2405.06624), followed by Q&A and open discussion.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Samuel Gélineau presents Parity Bot (gelisam.com/parity-bot): demonstrating that a neural network can be formally verified to satisfy a safety property on all inputs, by adapting a range analysis algorithm from classical code verification to neural network weights.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Evan Lombardi discusses how social media algorithms harm mental health and how AI amplifies these effects. Covers recommendation systems, dark patterns, deepfakes, and the mis/disinformation ecosystem, grounded in the Cambridge study "Algorithms, Addiction, and Adolescent Mental Health". Closes with an introduction to the Unplug Project.

Discussion of the Global Call for AI Red Lines (red-lines.ai), launched at UNGA-80 by Nobel laureates, former heads of state, and AI pioneers including Yoshua Bengio. The initiative urges governments to negotiate by end of 2026 an international agreement prohibiting the most dangerous AI uses and behaviors.

Olivier Coutu presents aisafety.info: an introduction to existential risks from AI, a 300+ article FAQ, a friendly chatbot named Stampy, and a dataset of AI alignment resources. Initiated by Rob Miles and sustained by volunteers.

Nik Lacombe introduces the PauseAI movement and its Montréal group (pauseai.ca/montreal). PauseAI aims to mitigate AI risks by convincing governments to pause the development of superhuman AI.

What should "AGI" mean and how could we measure it? Presentation of agidefinition.ai, which operationalizes AGI as matching the cognitive versatility of a well-educated adult using the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model — decomposing intelligence into ten abilities with concrete benchmark tasks.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Launch event for If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Yudkowsky and Soares (ifanyonebuildsit.com) — a case for why current paths toward superhuman AI could end in catastrophe. Opens with a primer on the book's arguments, followed by discussion and Q&A on technical, policy, and institutional risk-reduction.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Walkthrough of the First Key Update of the International AI Safety Report (Oct 14, 2025): rapid gains in maths, coding, and scientific assistance from post-training reasoning techniques; the emergence of longer-horizon tool-using agents; and implications for bio/cyber risks, controllability, and labour markets.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Reading group discussion of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Yudkowsky and Soares, hosted by Jeremy. Guided by questions suggested by the authors on the three core claims: that superhuman AI is buildable, that the default outcome is extinction, and that it can still be prevented.

How does Canada's 2025 federal budget address AI risk? Discussion mapping the AI-related budget items to threat models — power concentration, epistemics, bio, autonomy, misuse, systemic risk, and more.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety or governance — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Workshop to co-design a National Citizens' Assembly on Superintelligence for Canada. Participants align on mandate, stakeholders, and public input mechanisms, producing draft outputs: a Concept Note, a Consortium Intent Memo, and an invite list.

Introduction to Neuronpedia (neuronpedia.org): sparse autoencoders, features, and feature pages. Live demo exploring a model slice — searching features, running activation tests, and discussing standards of evidence. Closes with paths to contribution.

48-hour hackathon on defensive acceleration (def/acc): building technology to protect against pandemics, cybercrime, and powerful AI. Organized with Apart Research. $20,000 USD in prizes. Registration through Apart Research's event page required.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety or governance — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.

Activity led by Emma Kondrup. Examining pessimistsarchive.org — newspaper headlines across technological eras (automobile, radio, TV) — to interrogate AI exceptionalism: are AI's differential traits truly consequential enough to justify unique governance responses, and what would sufficient differences look like for future AGI/ASI?

Discussion of Scheffer et al.'s 2009 Nature review on critical transitions in complex systems. Despite mechanistic differences, systems approaching tipping points share generic early-warning signals — rising autocorrelation, increased variance — rooted in "critical slowing down". Facilitated by Orpheus, with implications for AI governance.

Presentation by Taylor Lynn Curtis, Mila researcher on misinformation. Explores AI systems designed for persuasion, then introduces Veracity — a real-world tool using AI to ensure data quality and detect misinformation. Closes with implications for responsible AI governance.

Presentation by Joaquim Streicher, Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience and co-founder of MONIC (Montreal Initiative for Consciousness science). Addresses AI consciousness: current expert consensus, the challenge of distinguishing true consciousness from imitation, risks of false positives and negatives, and lessons from consciousness testing in unresponsive patients.

48-hour hackathon on AI manipulation defense — building benchmarks, detection systems, and mitigations for sycophancy, deception, sandbagging, reward hacking, and dark patterns. Organized with Apart Research. $2,000 USD in prizes + fast-track to the Apart Fellowship and presentation at IASEAI'26 in Paris.

Screening of Writing Doom, a ~30-minute short film on AI, followed by discussion. Hosted by PauseAI Montréal.

Presentation by Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation at Work, ESG-UQAM). Based on 58 qualitative interviews, her book explores how Chinese citizens make sense of and live with pervasive digital surveillance — their imaginaries, coping strategies, and the psychological weight of constant surveillance exposure.

Weekend hackathon on technical AI governance infrastructure: hardware verification, attestation systems, privacy-preserving compliance proofs, risk threshold frameworks, and international coordination mechanisms. Organized with Apart Research. $2,000 USD in prizes + fast-tracks to Lucid Computing, MIRI TGT, and Apart Fellowship.

Presentation by Rashid Mushkani (UdeM + Mila). Discussion on who decides model behavior and by what criteria.

Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety or governance, followed by bouldering at Bloc Shop Mile-Ex. Entry ~$13 on Fridays. Bring your own lunch.

Reading circle of the OBVIA Cybersecurity & Cyberjustice axis. Presentation by Félix Tréguer, response by Benoît Dupont.

Participatory workshop (game format) on five issues of generative AI: information reliability, personal data, intellectual property, algorithmic bias, environmental impact. Registration required.

Workshop on thoughtful and ethical AI use, part of the free Perspective AI student program.

Meeting of the AI safety community of practice.

Workshop on data sharing and security in the AI era, part of the free Perspective AI student program.

Presentation by Benoît Dupont (Canada Research Chair in Cyber-Resilience, UdeM). Analysis of 160+ cybercriminal forum conversations: how hackers perceive and exploit AI, their doubts, and the implications for security.

Bring your laptop and your climbing shoes. Work on AI safety projects in good company, then boulder together.

Panel discussion on rights balancing: how frameworks protecting AI workers also reinforce human rights protections. Speakers include Heather Alexander and Jonathan Simon.

Community roundtable for the People's Consultation on AI. Share and discuss concerns about the impact of robotics and AI across sectors and what we want the government to do. No technical background needed. Limited FR/EN translation available.

Hands-on workshop to build a neural network in 2 hours, part of the free Perspective AI student program.

Shalaleh Rismani (McGill/Mila) presents research on how humans actually oversee AI systems — finding that greater understanding doesn't necessarily lead to better oversight.

Working on something related to AI safety or governance (e.g. research, engineering, policy)? Come work on your projects alongside others in the field — and boulder between sessions. We meet at Blocshop Mile Ex, 10h-14h. Entry ~$13 on Fridays. The gym has a café with tables & wifi. You may want to bring a lunch.

Workshop on reasoning in multi-agent systems: theory of mind, argumentation, and distributed reasoning — 22 speakers from AI, neuroscience, and philosophy. Part of IVADO's thematic semester on computational reasoning. $40–$240.

Overview of the Montréal AI safety landscape — who's doing what, where the bridges and gaps are — followed by structured small-group discussions on what's missing, who should be talking, and what to do in the next few months.

Week-long hackathon with three tracks: adversarial stress-testing, logic hardening, and synthetic data augmentation for safer conversational AI. Prizes include $10K and a Mila AI Safety Studio internship.

Working session to critically review CAIM's initial records — debate borderline cases, calibrate severity ratings, identify gaps, and flag records needing further work.

A discussion on artificial intelligence and the notion of consciousness — where does it begin?

Three-day hackathon to develop control protocols, build evaluation tools, and stress-test safety measures using ControlArena and SHADE-Arena.

Max (Greyhaven) presents Greywall, a software-defined sandbox and proxy for AI agents that provides fine-grained runtime visibility and controls. The talk also explores how sandboxing connects to the field of AI control.

Colloquium on integrating AI and sovereign digital technologies into government while protecting ethics, transparency, and public trust.

Jonathan Durand Folco (University of Saint-Paul) and Jonathan Martineau (Concordia) discuss algorithmic capitalism, its concentration of power, and possible forms of resistance.

Jean-François Godbout (Université de Montréal + Mila) explores the persuasive effects of generative AI, including deepfakes, automated influence, and AI-assisted propaganda, alongside mitigation strategies and a new AI-powered misinformation detection tool.

International colloquium on the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by generative AI in sexuality and intimate relationships.

Five-day bootcamp on statistical foundations of modern AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.

Five-day workshop on statistical methods for trustworthy AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.

The Montréal node of the Secure Program Synthesis Hackathon, a weekend research sprint at Ω Labs, organized with Apart Research and Atlas Computing. Build a prototype at the intersection of program synthesis, formal methods, security. Tracks - Specification Elicitation: tools that pull formal specs out of ambiguous sources (docs, legacy code, requirements). - Specification Validation: methods that check a candidate spec actually captures intended behavior. - Spec-Driven Development / Vericoding: workflows where a spec generates and ranks candidate implementations. - Adversarial Robustness for ITPs and proof tools: fuzzing kernels, defeating proof autocompleters, exploiting unsound automation. What happens after Top teams from the global cohort are invited to apply to Apart's 4-month Secure Program Synthesis Fellowship (June to October 2026), with mentors including Erik Meijer and Mike Dodds, plus compute, API credits, and demo-day travel funding. Who should join Researchers, students, and engineers working on or curious about formal methods, program synthesis, proof engineering, fuzzing, SMT or model checking, secure systems, or agent and ML evals. Schedule - Fri May 22, 18:00: kickoff, Apart track briefings (streamed in), team formation, dinner - Sat May 23, 09:00 to sunset: build, lunch provided - Sun May 24, 09:00 to 17:00: final day, lunch provided, demos at 15:00, end 17:00 Food provided: Friday dinner, Saturday and Sunday lunch. Bring your laptop. Apply with one or two sentences on what you would like to work on. Questions: team@horizonomega.org

A 5 à 7 at Ω Labs where community members share what they're working on. 5 people present each for 5 minutes + 5 minutes of Q&A. Completed work, work-in-progress, dead ends, and "I'm stuck on this" are all welcome. The point is to make work visible to peers, not to pitch. Presenters: - Heather Alexander (Future of Citizenship) - Rob Graham (Independent) - Jacques Thibodeau (Goodheart) - Ankit Mishra - <apply to present> Want to present at a Show-and-Tell? Email team@horizonomega.org. Un 5 à 7 à Ω Labs, où les membres de la communauté partagent leurs projets. Cinq personnes présenteront leur travail pendant cinq minutes chacune, suivies de cinq minutes de questions-réponses. Travaux terminés, en cours, ou impasses sont les bienvenus. L’objectif est de faire connaître son travail à ses pairs. Présentateur·ices : - Heather Alexander (Future of Citizenship) - Rob Graham (Independent) - Jacques Thibodeau (Goodheart) - Ankit Mishra - <applique pour présenter> Vous souhaitez présenter votre travail à un Show-and-Tell ? Écrivez à team@horizonomega.org.

METR's Frontier Risk Report (Feb-Mar 2026), published May 19, is the first third-party assessment of frontier developers' internal AI agent deployments. Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI participated. METR got access to their most capable internal models with raw chains of thought, plus a detailed questionnaire on internal use and monitoring. The inquiry: do agents have the means, motive, and opportunity to start a rogue deployment, and how robust could they make it? It will be an evening of going through and discussing the report. Orpheus will present. https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-19-frontier-risk-report/ — Le rapport Frontier Risk Report (février-mars 2026) de METR, publié le 19 mai, est la première évaluation indépendante des déploiements internes d'agents d'IA chez les développeurs de pointe. Anthropic, Google, Meta et OpenAI y ont participé. METR a eu accès à leurs modèles internes les plus performants, avec leurs chaînes de raisonnement brutes, ainsi qu'aux réponses à un questionnaire détaillé sur leur utilisation et leur surveillance internes. L'enquête : les agents disposent-ils des moyens, de la motivation et de l'opportunité pour amorcer un rogue deployment (déploiement non autorisé), et jusqu'à quel point pourraient-ils le rendre robuste ? La soirée sera dédiée à l'analyse et à la discussion du rapport. Orphée fera la présentation. https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-19-frontier-risk-report/ — Où / Where Ω Labs, 3813 Saint-Denis Contact host if you need assistance or for questions

Four-day workshop on uncertainty quantification in AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.

Emerging technologies are always hard to govern, especially when their onset is crammed into a few intense years. With AI, policymakers, thus far, have produced more case studies in failure than success. This talk will overview the stages of governing emerging tech, the challenge that are arising, and the diverse policy strategies that governments across the world are taking. Finally, we will speculate about how things may change in the next few years and how governments will need to adapt. We will speculate about how Xi Jinping, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Bernie Sanders, and anonymous hackers may all have the potential power to “blow it up” and usher in the next messy chapter of AI governance. A presentation by Stephen Casper: AI safety researcher, incoming Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, current Berkman Klein fellow, and recent MIT EECS PhD; working on technical safeguards, evaluations, and governance of frontier and open-weight AI systems, and a contributing author to the International AI Safety Report and Singapore Consensus. Stephen will join us via video call. The event is at Ω Labs, 3813 Saint-Denis.