Canada still has no comprehensive artificial intelligence legislation. As AI eliminates entry-level jobs, steals Canadian songs, and threatens to split society into two tiers.
I have been reading this collection of transcripts (along with the House committees, like INDU, that are also engaged with AI), and I noticed that you left out AI safety and existential risk from your summary.
Is that because you are thinking of dealing with it separately or is it not a salient issue for some reason?
Your closing note (“The question no senator asked aloud, but every transcript implies, is whether the country will act on what it’s learning before the moment the record becomes an indictment.”) will be especially poignant if we find ourselves in a situation where humanity is at risk and we spent our time worrying about copyright infringement.
Really enjoying your work and would be very interested to see your thoughts on the risk side of AI.
I went back through the Senate BANC committee transcripts looking for existential risk language specifically. It's mostly absent. The closest the record gets is Senator Colin Deacon pressing witnesses on systemic risk in financial infrastructure, not anything approaching civilizational concern. Meanwhile, the INDU committee spent considerable time on Bill C-27's Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (the part of the bill regulating high-impact AI systems) before it died on the Order Paper (meaning the bill was killed when Parliament was dissolved). The gap you're naming is real, and it's in the official record.
Check SOCI for a good treatment of x-risk. Also testimony from Bengio, Hinton, Duvenaud, Tegmark, Aguirre, Krueger, and others. When I get home I’ll send you some links (on my phone right now). The government heard, loud and clear, both houses, from credible witnesses (Nobel prizewinning scientists, inventors of AI).
Mike,
I have been reading this collection of transcripts (along with the House committees, like INDU, that are also engaged with AI), and I noticed that you left out AI safety and existential risk from your summary.
Is that because you are thinking of dealing with it separately or is it not a salient issue for some reason?
Your closing note (“The question no senator asked aloud, but every transcript implies, is whether the country will act on what it’s learning before the moment the record becomes an indictment.”) will be especially poignant if we find ourselves in a situation where humanity is at risk and we spent our time worrying about copyright infringement.
Really enjoying your work and would be very interested to see your thoughts on the risk side of AI.
…r
I went back through the Senate BANC committee transcripts looking for existential risk language specifically. It's mostly absent. The closest the record gets is Senator Colin Deacon pressing witnesses on systemic risk in financial infrastructure, not anything approaching civilizational concern. Meanwhile, the INDU committee spent considerable time on Bill C-27's Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (the part of the bill regulating high-impact AI systems) before it died on the Order Paper (meaning the bill was killed when Parliament was dissolved). The gap you're naming is real, and it's in the official record.
Check SOCI for a good treatment of x-risk. Also testimony from Bengio, Hinton, Duvenaud, Tegmark, Aguirre, Krueger, and others. When I get home I’ll send you some links (on my phone right now). The government heard, loud and clear, both houses, from credible witnesses (Nobel prizewinning scientists, inventors of AI).