The Montreal-based nonprofit is launching a fundraising campaign to grow its team to over 200 staff, according to AI Minister Evan Solomon. He said the federal government has signed a letter of intent to be a “meaningful backer” of LawZero. Solomon made the comments in a speech Thursday at a side event to the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. (The Logic)

Talking point: AI luminary Yoshua Bengio launched LawZero last June to build AI systems he considers to be safer than those built by commercial developers that are chasing superintelligence. The non-profit’s Scientist AI will be built not to have a memory or goals, and is supposed to act as a check on other models. It reportedly raised an initial US$30 million from donors, and has since won a major grant from the Gates Foundation. LawZero can’t yet say how much funding it’s seeking from the federal government or in total, but “looks forward to collaborating” with Ottawa on Scientist AI’s “next phase of development,” said Catherine Saine, vice-president of development and operations. “Safety research cannot be an afterthought—it must evolve alongside capability,” Solomon said, adding that Canada needs its own infrastructure to support such science.