Archive
Events
Tue, May 27 · 6:00 PM
International AI Safety Report - Risks from malicious use
La Fontaine Park, Montréal
Discussion of section 2.1 of the International AI Safety Report (January 2025) on risks from malicious use. Part of the AIGS Canada network.
Tue, Sep 16 · 7:00 PM
Towards Guaranteed Safe AI
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Fri, Sep 26 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Thu, Oct 2 · 7:00 PM
Verifying a toy neural network
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Fri, Oct 3 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Oct 7 · 7:00 PM
Social Media Safety and the Unplug Project
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Tue, Oct 14 · 7:00 PM
Global Call for AI Red Lines
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Thu, Oct 16 · 7:00 PM
Introducing aisafety.info
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Tue, Oct 21 · 7:00 PM
Introducing PauseAI Montréal
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Thu, Oct 23 · 7:00 PM
A Definition of AGI
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Fri, Oct 24 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Oct 28 · 7:00 PM
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Fri, Oct 31 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Nov 4 · 7:00 PM
International AI Safety Report – First Key Update
4449 Rue Berri, Montréal
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.
Fri, Nov 7 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Nov 11 · 1:00 PM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Nov 11 · 7:00 PM
If Anyone Reads It, Everyone's Welcome
Chez Jeremy (privé), Montréal
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.
Thu, Nov 13 · 7:00 PM
Canada's 2025 Budget vs AI risk
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Tue, Nov 18 · 1:00 PM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety or governance — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Nov 18 · 7:00 PM
Co-design a National Citizens' Assembly on Superintelligence
4449 Rue Berri, Montréal
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.
Thu, Nov 20 · 7:00 PM
Neuronpedia 101
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Sat, Nov 22 · 10:00 AM – Nov 23
Defensive Acceleration Hackathon
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montréal
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.
Tue, Nov 25 · 1:00 PM
AI Safety Coworking
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
Coworking session for anyone working on AI safety or governance — research, engineering, policy, or field-building. Light collaboration or quiet focus.
Tue, Nov 25 · 7:00 PM
Pessimists Archive
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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?
Thu, Nov 27 · 7:00 PM
Tipping Points & Early Warnings: Complex Systems Theory on Catastrophic Transitions
Bibliothèque des sciences de l'UQAM, Montréal
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.
Tue, Dec 2 · 7:00 PM
Veracity in the Age of Persuasive AI
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Tue, Dec 16 · 7:00 PM
Can AI systems be conscious? How could we know? And why does it matter?
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Fri, Jan 9 · 6:00 PM – Jan 11
AI Manipulation Hackathon
1907 Rue Logan, Montréal
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.
Sun, Jan 25 · 7:00 PM
Writing Doom watch party
Chez Jeremy (privé), Montréal
Screening of Writing Doom, a ~30-minute short film on AI, followed by discussion. Hosted by PauseAI Montréal.
Tue, Jan 27 · 7:00 PM
Living with Digital Surveillance in China
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, 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.
Fri, Jan 30 · 7:00 PM – Feb 1
The Technical AI Governance Challenge
3601 Rue Sainte-Famille, Montréal
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.
Tue, Feb 3 · 7:00 PM
AI Pluralism: What Models Do, Who Decides, and Why It Matters
UQAM Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
Presentation by Rashid Mushkani (UdeM + Mila). Discussion on who decides model behavior and by what criteria.
Fri, Feb 6 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking & Bouldering
Bloc Shop Mile-Ex, Montréal
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.
Fri, Feb 6 · 12:00 PM
Technopolice: Police Surveillance in the Age of AI
Online (Zoom)
Reading circle of the OBVIA Cybersecurity & Cyberjustice axis. Presentation by Félix Tréguer, response by Benoît Dupont.
Fri, Feb 6 · 1:00 PM
The Battle of AI
501 rue de la Gauchetière Ouest, salle C.623, Montréal
Participatory workshop (game format) on five issues of generative AI: information reliability, personal data, intellectual property, algorithmic bias, environmental impact. Registration required.
Fri, Feb 6 · 4:00 PM
Perspective AI: Thoughtful and ethical AI use
Hybrid
Workshop on thoughtful and ethical AI use, part of the free Perspective AI student program.
Thu, Feb 12 · 9:00 AM
Mila Community of Practice: AI Safety
Mila (6666 St-Urbain), Montréal
Meeting of the AI safety community of practice.
Fri, Feb 13 · 4:00 PM
Perspective AI: Data sharing and security in the AI era
Hybrid
Workshop on data sharing and security in the AI era, part of the free Perspective AI student program.
Tue, Feb 17 · 7:00 PM
What Hackers Talk About When They Talk About AI
UQAM Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Fri, Feb 20 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking & Bouldering
Bloc Shop Mile-Ex, Montréal
Bring your laptop and your climbing shoes. Work on AI safety projects in good company, then boulder together.
Tue, Feb 24 · 7:00 PM
How the Future Rights of AI Workers will also Protect Human Rights
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
Panel discussion on rights balancing: how frameworks protecting AI workers also reinforce human rights protections. Speakers include Heather Alexander and Jonathan Simon.
Wed, Feb 25 · 6:30 PM
ORI Community Roundtable: People's Consultation on AI
Concordia SHIFT Centre, Montréal
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.
Fri, Feb 27 · 4:00 PM
Perspective AI: Build your neural network in 2 hours!
Hybrid
Hands-on workshop to build a neural network in 2 hours, part of the free Perspective AI student program.
Tue, Mar 3 · 7:00 PM
When Is a Human Actually "Overseeing" an AI System?
Maison du développement durable, Montréal
Shalaleh Rismani (McGill/Mila) presents research on how humans actually oversee AI systems — finding that greater understanding doesn't necessarily lead to better oversight.
Fri, Mar 6 · 10:00 AM
AI Safety Coworking & Bouldering
Bloc Shop Mile-Ex, Montréal
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.
Tue, Mar 10 – Mar 13
Social Reasoning and the Ecology of Thought
IVADO, Montréal
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.
Tue, Mar 10 · 7:00 PM
What should Montréal's role be in AI safety?
UQAM - Pavillon President-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Mon, Mar 16 – Mar 23
Building Safer AI for Youth Mental Health
Mila, Montréal
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.
Tue, Mar 17 · 7:00 PM
Atelier: Canadian AI Incident Monitor Review
UQAM - Pavillon President-Kennedy, Montréal
Working session to critically review CAIM's initial records — debate borderline cases, calibrate severity ratings, identify gaps, and flag records needing further work.
Thu, Mar 19 · 5:00 PM
Artificial Intelligence: Where Does Consciousness Begin?
Université de Montréal - Campus MIL, Montréal
A discussion on artificial intelligence and the notion of consciousness — where does it begin?
Fri, Mar 20 · 7:00 PM – Mar 22
AI Control Hackathon
FOULAB Hackerspace, Montréal
Three-day hackathon to develop control protocols, build evaluation tools, and stress-test safety measures using ControlArena and SHADE-Arena.
Tue, Apr 14 · 5:00 PM
Greywall: AI Agent Sandboxing & Aligning Capability with Security
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Wed, Apr 15 · 9:00 AM
Digital Sovereignty in Quebec: Reconciling Strategy, Ethics, and the Public Interest
Université Laval - Pavillon Maurice-Pollack, Québec
Colloquium on integrating AI and sovereign digital technologies into government while protecting ethics, transparency, and public trust.
Thu, Apr 16 · 12:00 PM
Algorithmic Capital: Accumulation, Power, and Resistance in the Age of AI
Jonathan Durand Folco (University of Saint-Paul) and Jonathan Martineau (Concordia) discuss algorithmic capitalism, its concentration of power, and possible forms of resistance.
Tue, Apr 28 · 7:00 PM
AI and Persuasion: Capabilities and Mitigation
UQAM - Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Montréal
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.
Thu, Apr 30 · 8:00 AM
Sexuality and Generative AI: Benefits, Harms, and Paths Forward
UQAM - Pavillon Judith-Jasmin annexe, Montréal
International colloquium on the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by generative AI in sexuality and intimate relationships.
Mon, May 4 · 9:00 AM – May 8
Bootcamp: Statistical Insights into Modern AI Systems
Montréal
Five-day bootcamp on statistical foundations of modern AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.
Mon, May 11 · 9:30 AM – May 15
Workshop: Statistics in Trustworthy AI
Montréal
Five-day workshop on statistical methods for trustworthy AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.
Fri, May 22 · 6:00 PM – May 24
The Secure Program Synthesis Hackathon
Montréal
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
Thu, May 28 · 5:00 PM
AI Safety Montréal Show-and-Tell
Montréal
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.
Tue, Jun 2 · 7:00 PM
METR's Frontier Risk Report (February to March 2026)
Montréal
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
Mon, Jun 8 · 9:30 AM – Jun 11
Workshop: Uncertainty in AI
Montréal
Four-day workshop on uncertainty quantification in AI, part of the IVADO thematic semester on Statistical Foundations of AI.
Wed, Jun 17 · 7:00 PM
AI Governance in 2026: What’s going on, why it’s a mess, and why it’s going to get messier.
Montréal
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.
No upcoming events at the moment. Check back soon! No past events to show.