Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne will not attend an in-person meeting of digital ministers in Seoul on May 22, because it is a House of Commons sitting week, said spokesperson Audrey Champoux. University of Toronto emeritus professor Geoffrey Hinton also declined an invitation to the summit. Mila scientific director Yoshua Bengio, who is chairing an international report on advanced AI safety, will be “actively involved” but hasn’t decided whether that will be virtually or in person, said Mila spokesperson Ludovic Soucisse. (The Logic, Reuters)

Talking point: The Seoul event is a follow-up to last November’s U.K. AI Safety Summit, where more than two dozen governments pledged to cooperate more closely on the technology’s governance. The conference brought top tech bosses like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and X.AI’s Elon Musk together with world leaders like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris to discuss how the most advanced systems should be built and regulated. The Korean edition is set to have fewer of those big names. But Bengio is scheduled to deliver his “state of the science” report, which will review the latest literature on the most cutting-edge AI to inform policymaking.