Peter Menzies: AI is coming. Is our government ready?
Late last month, a voluntary code of conduct was announced. Legislation, hopefully sensible, will follow.
By: Peter Menzies
There was a saying that used to be thrown around in newsrooms about the nature of what we refer to these days as legacy media.
It went something like this: “By the time you see a daily newspaper start to cover a trend, you know it’s over.”
A cruel description, perhaps, of the embedded ways of thinking that turned your hometown daily into an extra in The Walking Dead. But fair. Trying to get a newspaper to adapt to change was like executing a 90-degree turn while at the helm of a supertanker. It took time. Lots and lots of time. And planning. So much planning …
Government, of late, has taken the newspaper industry’s cues when it comes to adapting to the internet. And I don’t mean that in a complimentary way. Both the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act are thigh-slapping examples of outdated thinking.
Or they would be thigh-slappers if they weren’t about to cast thousands of people out of work, turn the internet into Rogers cable, and ensure even porn comes with closed captioning, described video, specifically employs Indigenous, black, brown and LGBTQ2+ communities, and streams a prescribed percentage of certified Canadian content.
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), though, there is at least some sign there might yet be a soupçon of serious thinking in Ottawa. François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, has challenged his government’s #okboomer approach to modernity. He has taken the first steps towards regulating that which is overtaking newspapers, search engines and possibly everything else — AI.
Late last month, a voluntary code of conduct was announced. Legislation, hopefully sensible, will follow. One is aware that editors demand to know “why should readers care?” So, rather than put in the usual time and effort searching, I just asked the Google Lady, with whom I have a good relationship, “Hey Google, why should people care about Artificial Intelligence?” And, just like that, she replied in her soothing English accent (my preference) that there are a whole bunch of things to worry about. Most notably, while it is vigorously logical, AI is devoid of any sense of ethics or morality.
That hardly makes it unique in today’s world, but other items she listed include the lack of transparency (e.g. how do you know Menzies wrote this and not ChatGPT?), bias, and discrimination. AI’s has the ability to scrape your personal data and use it for God knows what. It is vulnerable to hackers, and it concentrates power in the hands of a very few companies. Then we get to job displacement.
That’s a lot to handle, so let’s just take a quick look at the last one. AI will destroy jobs. There are dozens of examples that I’m sure you can come up with on your own but, seeing as The Line readers take an interest in the news business, here’s why you shouldn’t let your kids waste their money and dreams on a journalism degree.
All the online news portal of the future needs to do to cover a vast swath of local news is a steady feed of news releases. Get local sports leagues and clubs to send in their box scores and statistical summaries, and AI will convert them to stories. Ditto with routine transcripts from city council meetings, he-said-she-said news releases from competing political parties, as well as those from the police, fire departments or city hall. Put them in the hands of AI, et voila even a small, minimally staffed organization becomes a veritable fount of local news, sports and entertainment.
The upside of this is that readers get lots of information aggregated in one stop and the organization’s reporters are free to focus on generating the original, unique content needed to build paying audiences. The downside is that the jobs that AI replaces are currently known as “starter” positions.
This is one reason why governments need to be getting engaged with this issue, and as soon as possible. But there are others. Here it gets creepy.
Young men, the majority of whom these days are without a human romantic companion, are increasingly finding happiness in the virtual arms of AI girlfriends, who are displacing their human counterparts.
According to Liberty Vittert, writing in The Hill, “The rise of virtual artificial intelligence (AI) girlfriends is enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men….
“Apps have created virtual girlfriends that talk to you, love you, allow you to live out your erotic fantasies, and learn, through data, exactly what you like and what you don’t like, creating the ‘perfect’ relationship.”
AI will make ‘em however you want ‘em — it’s all a private world of Stepford Wives that never complain, get pregnant, angry, make you play second fiddle to the kids or say “We need to talk.” They never say “fine,” always tell their guy he’s smart, handsome, sexy and they never grow old, fat or wrinkly, or care when the guy does. According to the Oh Canada Project, 63 per cent of 18-to 34-year-old Canadian men experience serious loneliness — a rate 10 per cent higher than their female counterparts.
Some might say AI has found a solution with its girlfriend apps. To others, what has been fabricated is a monster that threatens the very core of what it means to be a human being.
That’s why you should care. And it’s why future AI legislation is going to struggle mightily to balance personal autonomy with the public good. We might start seeing it first with how you get your news, but soon, it might be about how we as human beings form basic personal attachments. Lest we see our societies become even more poorly informed, misanthropic, and atomised than they currently are thanks to the last great technological revolution.
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I have long felt that our current internet of things (IOT) has had a downside that those of us who embraced it early, didn't anticipate - the things we now call "social media" - are largely platforms that prevent people from having actual social connections. Sure, there are the meetups of the world, and you can use facebook to organize events, but a facebook feed is largely people sharing memes, facebook ads that litter the space, and people voicing their criticisms of each other or praise in some circumstances - but these are snapshots into someone's life - not a meaningful connection. Twitter, for the most part, is the definition of screaming into the universe and never changing anything. At the click of a button, you can find people who share your viewpoints, build information silos, and largely avoid knowing that there are people in the world with opinions who differ from you.
Many people like this - they enjoy always being right, feeling like they're doing the socially right or ethically right thing. But within that, people are largely losing empathy. They're losing the ability to understand the perspective of those who disagree with us. My teen recently asked if I thought he should only date someone who had the same political beliefs as him - this was a 100% serious question. I clearly stated that no - people's political beliefs change over time and that we can't define someone solely as their political beliefs but rather should look for the things we have in common and see if we're compatible on that deeper level of respect and common goals. Even when we are in disagreement in terms of goals, or the course of action is one that we feel is wrong, it's so important to remember that we each have unique experiences and that people can both be making decisions from a place of good intention, but want two different things. The internet has made us lose sight of this. It has actually created barriers that reduce our ability to communicate freely and to see each other as humans. (This is even more problematic when you consider how platforms censor speech that they don't agree with, forcing the users of the platform to shape their speech into a way that is acceptable enough to avoid censorship.)
Anyways - this is my very long winded way of saying that AI poses a threat to society as we know it. I know the people working in the industry largely see it as freeing humans up to spend more time doing the things that are important to them, but I think this removes a basic understanding of the economy, jobs, and general social connections. Are we willing to pay for a service that is being provided by AI? If not, how does the company who is largely using AI pay for it's hosting services and the few employees it actually does have on staff? I know people say this is why UBI is needed - BUT - if not enough people are paying taxes, there isn't going to be enough government funds for UBI. And what will motivate a minority of people to continue working and paying taxes if the majority of their peers are collecting UBI and not working?
Humans need purpose and connection to feel happy and enjoy life. I fear that modern life is removing both purpose and connection and that as people become less and less happy and dissatisfied, society will only suffer more with increased drug addiction, violence, and more.
So all this to say - I'm pretty against AI overall. And I would encourage anyone else in the Gen X age range/maybe older millenials as well, to really seriously look at social media, and see whether you truly have more meaningful connections - someone who will come and cook a meal for you if you're sick, or sit with you in the hospital, or come get you if your tire is flat. Or if it's just scrolling and clicks and a false sense of connection.
I hope the government acts sensibly when it comes to legislation, but the other piece of this is that I think every individual needs to engage in conversations with their peers about what friendship means to them, what connection looks like - what forms our communities and keeps them vibrant. These things are necessary if the kids who are growing up today are going to have a cohesive society to age into and I'm not sure that we have this in place right now.
Expecting or even hoping for some intelligent thinking from this current cabal of tools is nigh on to laughable.....name a single sensible, good for the country thought Trudeau and his french clique have had.........................thought so.