The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, July 26, edition that Canadian artificial intelligence researcher Yoshua Bengio told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law Tuesday that AI systems capable of human-level intelligence could be a few years away and pose potentially catastrophic risks. The Globe's Joe Castaldo writes that the subcommittee is investigating the creation of an AI oversight body. Prof. Bengio said, "There is a significant probability that superhuman AI is just a few years away." The sophistication of generative AI applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT has surprised even industry researchers such as Prof. Bengio, leading some to revise their timelines for the arrival of applications that are as smart as -- or smarter than -- humans. Experts previously thought human-level AI could be decades away. Prof. Bengio, however, believes AI researchers could be close to a breakthrough. Last week, seven tech firms including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Amazon agreed to "voluntary commitments" such as security testing of AI systems before release and developing technical measures so the public will know when pictures and other media are machine-generated.