AI Godfather Yoshua Bengio has just sounded an alarm to people against giving Artificial Intelligence rights. In an interview with The Guardian Yoshua Bengio hinted that giving rights to AI will be similar to “giving citizenship to extra terrestials”. Yoshua Bengio made it clear that people need to think deeply about their demands. He also stressed that people demanding that AI’s have rights would be a huge mistake.
Yoshua Bengio is considered the Godfather of AI alongside Geofrrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. Therefore his warning must be taken seriously. Moreover since Artificial intelligence is evolving with each passing day. The AI models are much faster and productive leading to their increased use. Additionally with the arrival of AGI’s in the coming years will also increase the interactions.
This has sparked a debate on whether or not AI should be given rights. Which also means that AI will be treated like humans with the same rights.
Humans may not be able to shut down AI?
On the face of it, giving legal rights to AI may not seem like a drastic idea. After all, humans are increasingly using AI not just for information, but even as a way to receive emotional support. However, Yoshua Bengio pointed out that humanity may lose control over AI in the long run. He explained, “Frontier AI models already show signs of self-preservation in experimental settings today, and eventually giving them rights would mean we’re not allowed to shut them down.”
But how did this debate start?
As AI chatbots have grown in popularity, there has been a growing concern regarding ‘AI welfare.’ In August 2025, Anthropic stated that it would let its Claude Opus 4 model . The firm claimed that this was done to protect ‘AI welfare.’ Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who leads xAI, chimed in on this conversation at that time and wrote, “Torturing AI is not okay.”
However, for Yoshua Bengio, this belief that chatbots could be considered conscious was ‘going to drive bad decisions.’ The AI godfather reiterated that it could be like granting citizenship to aliens who end up having bad intentions. Yoshua Bengio added, “Imagine some alien species came to the planet and at some point we realise that they have nefarious intentions for us. Do we grant them citizenship and rights, or do we defend our lives?”
