Canadian prime minister Mark Carney rolled out his government\u2019s AI strategy earlier this month, annoyingly titled \u201cAI for All.\u201d But in it, I saw something novel: not just the aggressive pursuit of AI dollars by giving industry what it wants, but also reframing opposition to AI and hyperscale data centers as the product of a lack of AI \u201cliteracy.\u201d If only the Canadian public was taught to use AI tools, the strategy suggests, they\u2019ll come around to backing them.<\/p>\n
As you won\u2019t be surprised to hear, I think that\u2019s a poor judgement that misunderstands why people have turned against AI so aggressively. I wrote up my thoughts<\/a> recently for The Tyee, a fantastic progressive publication based in British Columbia. They\u2019ve been kind enough to let me share them with Disconnect subscribers.<\/p>\n In late May protesters marched through Vancouver in an attempt to halt\u00a0two AI data centres<\/a>\u00a0that Telus is planning for the city.<\/p>\n They called out the massive energy demands to power all the computers inside the centres and the vast quantities of water that would be used to keep them cool, especially as the region faces water restrictions. The demonstration came just weeks after the federal government\u00a0threw its support<\/a>\u00a0behind the project.<\/p>\n Of course, they were focused on not just data centres, but the chatbots and generative AI tools they were being built to power.<\/p>\n By early June, the Vancouver School Board\u00a0started<\/a>\u00a0rolling out chatbot accounts for students aged 13 and over, despite the research suggesting it could affect students\u2019\u00a0critical thinking skills<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0cognition<\/a>, not to mention ongoing media reports about the effects chatbots have had on teens\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n Those details should have been red flags for administrators; they certainly\u00a0were for some parents<\/a>.<\/p>\n A group called Parents for AI Caution in Education Spaces is now seeking signatures to demand a two-year pause on the rollout of chatbots in Vancouver schools until there\u2019s better data on the technology\u2019s effects on students. Those ideas are spreading, not just in British Columbia but across Canada. But you might not get that impression if you listen to the federal government.<\/p>\n On June 4, Prime Minister Mark Carney rolled out his long-awaited AI strategy. Called \u201cAI for All,\u201d it laid out an ambition to invest in domestic AI infrastructure such as data centres, significantly increase the adoption of AI by Canadian businesses and begin to address some of the concerns with generative AI that are stymying what the government described as people\u2019s trust in the technology.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Escaping the trap of US tech dependence<\/p>\n Canada needs real digital sovereignty, not our own digital colonizers<\/p>\n The centrepiece of the strategy revolved around the concept of AI literacy. Carney acknowledged that trust needs to be established, which at this point is an understatement. Recent polling from the Angus Reid Institute suggests 68 per cent of Canadians\u00a0want to see strict regulation<\/a>\u00a0of artificial intelligence, even if it slows development. But the prime minister is not seriously trying to address the concerns of those in the streets who oppose data centres, or of parents concerned about what chatbots might mean for their children.<\/p>\n Instead, the government is positioning the disconnect over the exuberance of industry \u2014 not to mention Carney himself and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon \u2014 and the public\u2019s skepticism as the product of a knowledge gap. The plan seeks to invest millions\u00a0to educate Canadians<\/a>\u00a0on how to use AI, in effect increasing their \u201cliteracy\u201d of the technology. They will give chatbots to every university student, train 90,000 young people to be advocates of the technology in small and medium-sized businesses, and equip more than 3,000 educators to provide AI training accessible by all Canadians.<\/p>\n The government acknowledges that the sector will need to be regulated, but the changes to privacy legislation, measures to protect children and their data, and restrictions on the production of deepfake images are only the tip of the iceberg of the concerns that civil society groups and many ordinary people have with generative AI.<\/p>\n Canadians are seeing their own social media feeds filled with AI slop and misinformation. They\u2019re reading stories of people taking their lives after forming dependencies on chatbots. People who live in quiet small towns fear that proposed data centres\u00a0will threaten<\/a>\u00a0their quality of life. Artists are seeing their work ripped off by AI companies. And who can forget how OpenAI\u00a0refused to report<\/a>\u00a0the troubled 18-year-old shooter in Tumbler Ridge months before that devastating tragedy took place?<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much more than a literacy gap leading Canadians to push back against having generative AI forced on them in so many areas of their lives. The government itself should know better. It has already tried to roll out a chatbot to give Canadians tax advice, only for the auditor general to find it provided incorrect information 66 per cent of the time. More recently, its use of generative AI in immigration was found to have denied a woman\u2019s permanent residency application after the system made up\u00a0parts of her submission<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The conservative-tech alliance is coming to Canada<\/p>\n Shopify executives want to emulate the right-wing project of their Silicon Valley peers<\/p>\n Just weeks before Carney stood in front of medical workers from the University Health Network in Toronto to announce his strategy and talk about how beneficial AI will be in health care, the auditor general of Ontario had released a scathing report on AI scribes. Those chatbots, used to transcribe conversations between doctors and patients, are currently used by over 5,000 doctors in the province. But the technology sold as a means to save time had been regularly registering\u00a0incorrect information<\/a>\u00a0and making up details about patients\u2019 health. It was so bad that the AI scribes were recording the wrong drug prescribed to patients 60 per cent of the time.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just a problem in the public sector. As Carney\u2019s strategy seeks to boost business adoption of AI from 12 per cent today to 60 per cent in eight years, there are growing reports in the United States of companies\u00a0pulling back on AI spending<\/a>\u00a0as the growing costs are not delivering the expected benefits or efficiencies. In May, the president of Uber even admitted that AI spending was becoming \u201charder to justify\u201d as the company burned through its annual AI budget\u00a0in just four months<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that Carney and Solomon have bought the industry narrative hook, line and sinker. They seem to firmly believe that chatbots are the foundation of the next industrial revolution, but that claim is based more on faith \u2014 and the hype needed to boost the valuations of AI companies \u2014 than on hard data. In fact, it requires actively ignoring the stories of the very real harms of the technology that continue to pile up.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a certain irony in the federal government\u2019s belated focus on legislation to address the harms of social media, beginning with plans for a\u00a0higher age limit<\/a>\u00a0to keep those 16 and under off the platforms \u2014 because even as that delayed online harms legislation moves forward, the age limit won\u2019t be extended to cover AI chatbots.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/storage.ghost.io\/c\/a3\/8c\/a38c83f8-bcf7-4a9e-a1e8-14d4368e6b10\/content\/images\/thumbnail\/trumpcarney-b3dd79cb-cfc7-4c08-ab66-05c3a6e868ae.png\")
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