{"id":104143,"date":"2025-08-28T23:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104143\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:14:08","slug":"85-of-canadians-want-government-regulation-for-ai-poll-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104143\/","title":{"rendered":"85% of Canadians want government regulation for AI, poll shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has said he will put less emphasis on AI regulation, as governments focus on AI adoption rather than safety and governance.Christopher Katsarov\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

A new poll indicates an overwhelming majority of Canadians are in favour of regulating artificial intelligence<\/a>, and almost half are worried it will contribute to cognitive decline.<\/p>\n

The Leger poll found 85 per cent of respondents believe governments should regulate AI tools to ensure ethical and safe use. More than half, 57 per cent, said they strongly agreed with that statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very clear Canadians want government involved,\u201d said Jennifer McLeod Macey, senior vice-president at Leger.<\/p>\n

The survey, which polled 1,518 people between Aug. 22 and Aug. 25, was conducted online and can\u2019t be assigned a margin of error.<\/p>\n

Opinion: AI is winning hearts and minds \u2013 but at what cost to our cognitive future?<\/a><\/p>\n

Opinion: To the freshman class of 2025: Will you let AI think for you, or learn how to think for yourself?<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has said he will put less emphasis on AI regulation, amid a global shift in which governments are focusing on AI adoption and away from safety and governance.<\/p>\n

The Trudeau government put forward an AI regulation bill targeting \u201chigh-impact\u201d systems, but Bill C-27 did not become law before the election was called, and it\u2019s not clear whether, or in what form, it will be reintroduced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The poll found despite strong concerns about potential harms of AI, use of AI has increased 10 per cent since March, with 57 per cent of respondents saying they have used an AI tool. That\u2019s up from 30 per cent in February of 2024.<\/p>\n

In reality, those numbers may be even higher. McLeod Macey said some people may be using AI tools without realizing they\u2019re AI, such in their thermostat or a virtual assistant like Amazon\u2019s Alexa.<\/p>\n

A new poll indicates an overwhelming majority of Canadians are in favour of regulating artificial intelligence, and almost half are worried it will contribute to cognitive decline. Jennifer McLeod Macey, senior vice-president at Leger, says Canadians don’t always want government involved, but in this case there is a clear sign that Canadians want it involved with AI.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

More than three quarters of respondents, 78 per cent, said AI tools threaten human jobs, and nearly half, 46 per cent, said they worried using AI in their daily life might make them \u201cintellectually lazy\u201d or decline their cognitive skills.<\/p>\n

A large majority, 83 per cent, said they have privacy concerns and worry society will become too dependent on AI tools.<\/p>\n

While 62 per cent of respondents agreed that the content AI tools provide is useful, 66 per cent said the \u201cprospect of having them in our lives is scary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the respondents were also satisfied with the AI tools they used, with 75 per cent rating them as either excellent or good. Chatbots such as ChatGPT were the most widely used, with 73 per cent of respondents saying they had tried them. Just over half, 53 per cent, said they had tried search engines with artificial intelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The poll suggests Canadians are split on the overall effect of AI tools, with about a third, 34 per cent, saying they\u2019re good for society, 36 per cent saying they\u2019re bad for society, and 31 per cent saying they don\u2019t know or declined to answer.<\/p>\n

The polling industry\u2019s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys can\u2019t be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has said he will put less emphasis on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-104143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}