Université de Montréal

Université de Montréal (UdeM) is Canada's second-largest university by research volume and the largest French-language university in North America outside of France. Founded in 1878 as a branch of Université Laval and achieving independence in 1919, UdeM today enrolls approximately 69,000 students across 13 faculties and affiliated schools, including HEC Montréal (business) and Polytechnique Montréal (engineering). The university employs around 10,000 staff, including 2,300 professors and researchers, and generates over $775 million CAD in annual research funding. UdeM is particularly notable in the AI safety and responsible AI space as the institutional home of Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award laureate and one of the most-cited scientists in the world. Bengio is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO) and has become an increasingly prominent voice on AI existential risk, advocating for safe and beneficial AI development. He chaired the first International AI Safety Report (released February 2025) and co-founded LawZero in 2025, a nonprofit focused on building AI systems that are honest and can detect harmful behaviors. The DIRO department also hosts David Krueger, an assistant professor and holder of the IVADO Professorship in Responsible AI and a CIFAR AI Chair. Krueger's research explicitly focuses on reducing the risk of human extinction from AI (AI x-risk) through technical alignment research, AI safety, robustness, interpretability, and governance. UdeM launched the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI in 2017, which has gathered more than 3,000 signatories worldwide and articulates seven principles: well-being, autonomy, justice, privacy, knowledge, democracy, and responsibility. The university is affiliated with MILA (the Quebec AI Institute, researched separately) and co-anchors IVADO, Canada's largest AI research and knowledge-mobilization consortium. UdeM's MIL campus serves as a dedicated hub for AI and data science research, further cementing Montreal's position as a global center for artificial intelligence.