The Vector Institute is a non-profit artificial-intelligence research institute based in Toronto, Ontario. It hosts researchers who hold Canada CIFAR AI Chairs, the chair programme under which Nicolas Papernot's appointment is held, and its researchers commonly hold joint appointments with Canadian universities.
Research recorded here
Four of the six authors of "AI Agents Enable Adaptive Computer Worms" (arXiv:2606.03811, June 2, 2026) — Jonas Guan, Tom Blanchard, Hengrui Jia, and Papernot — list joint University of Toronto and Vector Institute affiliations. The paper reports a contained proof-of-concept worm driven by an open-weight language model hosted on compromised GPUs, and argues that vendor-side safety controls cannot reach a threat that uses no vendor API (AI Agents Enable Adaptive Computer Worms (Guan et al., June 2026)). Its authors state that before publication they sought guidance through a University process and disclosed the threat of AI-driven worms to several Government of Canada entities.