Community note debunks viral Bengio quote: "regretted his life's work" was about Hinton
NathanpmYoung · x · 2026-10-30
Nathan Young highlighted a Community Note rated helpful on X, debunking the widely circulated claim that Yoshua Bengio "regretted his life's work" when he turned to AI activism.
The note clarifies the phrase actually comes from the New York Times' May 2023 reporting on Geoffrey Hinton leaving Google. A BBC headline that month said Bengio felt "lost" over his work, and Bengio later wrote that he never made such a statement. Sources including MIT Technology Review's original Hinton report are linked.
It's a textbook case of misattribution spreading in AI-safety discourse, with Community Notes increasingly serving as the correction mechanism.
Related event: Community Notes Debunk Fake Bengio Regret Quote(2 posts)→
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