Dear PM Mark Carney and Evan Solomon, This post is for you.

A Wilcox cartoon showing an enormous robotic dog in grey with a red spiked collar and ID on it saying "AI" and facing left where a man in a white lab coat standing on a large step ladder is feeding the dog a Canadian flag. There is a large yellow bin filled with books and other items to be fed to the robot. On the right side, or the back side of the robotic dog, is another man in a white lab coat with a large red pail sitting beneath the dog's anus, saying "It's marvelous really. You just feed in all the intellectual property you can get your hands on without paying for it, then sell whatever comes out this end,.."

@parismarx.com‬:

Mark Carney wants economic growth at any cost. To achieve it, he’s going after tech investment and pushing hard for AI adoption.

In the process, AI regulations are being thrown on the bonfire and tech harms are an afterthought. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Canada’s new AI minister has already told the tech industry the government will not be “over-indexing” on AI regulation in the hope of attracting more AI investment,

When Evan Solomon took the stage in Ottawa last month to give his inaugural speech as Canada’s first-ever Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, he was quick to reassure tech leaders that regulating their industry would not be his top priority. Rather than dwelling on AI’s pitfalls and “over-indexing on warnings and regulation,” his focus would be on unlocking the technology’s economic potential, he said. The regulatory legislation that had been in the works under Justin Trudeau was now fully off the table. For Canada’s tech elites, this was cause for celebration. After spending much of the past year cozying up to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives in search of less regulation and lower taxes, these CEOs could now breathe a sigh of relief.

Carney treats AI as a magically solution to many of Canada’s problems: it will increase productivity, reduce the budget deficit, make the public sector more efficient, and more.

But there’s little evidence things will play out as he suggests.

Since Mark Carney arrived on the political scene, he’s made AI adoption a cornerstone of his policy program, based on the view that the technology can serve as an essential tool in boosting productivity and addressing the government’s budget deficit. His federal election platform contained plans to increase funding for AI projects, create incentives for workers and businesses to adopt it, and cut “red tape” around the construction of infrastructure like data centres. Carney’s excitement about AI isn’t new. In his 2021 book Values(s), he outlined his belief that AI, big data, and increases in computing power meant that “smarter machines are already replacing a broader range of human activities than before.” Now, when asked tough questions about government finances, military procurement, and the state of the economy, he often throws out AI as an obvious solution that doesn’t require further detail.

During the last AI hype wave, we didn’t see computers or robots replace a ton of workers. What we saw was companies like Amazon and Uber (then many more) roll out new technologies to increase their power over workers.

Claims that artificial intelligence is on the cusp of transforming society are nothing new. In the 2010s, it was common to argue that advances in robotics and AI would wipe out as many as half the jobs in the entire economy, leading progressives to debate whether it was time for a universal basic income. But those narratives were little more than a distraction from how AI was really being used in many parts of society. AI didn’t bring about mass unemployment. Instead, it gave employers new tools to exploit workers. Companies like Amazon and Uber pioneered the rollout of algorithmic management techniques, which used automated systems to increase control over workers, crush their attempts to unionize, push down wages, and worsen working conditions. Gig work expanded, turning employees into contractors while offering the illusion of freedom and empowerment. In the years since, those technologies have proliferated into workplaces well beyond the major tech companies.

Governments got in on the hype then too, with disastrous consequences. Algorithmic tools were rolled out in benefits systems, visa processing, health care, policing, and more — often leading to harmful and discriminatory outcomes that hurt countless people.

From Sweden and Denmark to the Netherlands and Australia, AI-powered systems used to detect fraud have been found to falsely flag people from marginalized groups and throw hundreds of thousands of people off benefits—destroying lives in the process and even pushing some to commit suicide out of desperation. In 2021, a class action lawsuit successfully forced the Australian government to pay $1.8 billion AUD in compensation to 443,000 people affected by its “robodebt” system. A recent report found public servants in Australia are hesitant to adopt future AI systems because they’ve seen how harmful they can be when not done properly.

There’s already a growing body of evidence suggesting generative AI tools do not change that. Employees don’t find they’re more productive when using the tools, and more companies are finding the same.

The social harm escalates with every passing day.

In a study conducted last year, 77 per cent of employees said generative AI created more work for them, not less. More recently, The Economist reported a growing number of companies are abandoning projects to implement generative AI while the BBC spoke to others that were having to hire people to fix the mistakes generative AI systems are making. Air Canada was even forced to compensate a customer for its chatbot’s mistake last year. There is also growing evidence that the use of chatbots is reducing users’ cognitive abilities, leaving their critical thinking skills “atrophied and unprepared,” according to a study that involved Microsoft researchers. There are alarming stories about the rise of people getting hooked to chatbots, becoming severely delusional, and even having to be committed for mental health treatment. And the technology has led to a rise in non-consensual, AI-generated explicit images, which particularly victimize teenage girls.

Carney said it was elbows up against the US, but is embracing the tech industry because he wants their investment, regardless of the harm their services cause.

He killed the capital gains tax increase they hated, the ditched the digital services tax.

Carney isn’t just overlooking AI’s pitfalls — he’s deliberately crafting a policy agenda that aligns with the interests of Big Tech. While he boasted about taking an “elbows up” stance against Trump during the last federal election, his approach to the tech industry—whose leaders have cozied up to the MAGA movement—has been anything but adversarial. His government killed the planned capital gains tax increase that had angered domestic tech executives, rolled out a series of measures seeking to attract more tech investment, and, most recently, killed the digital services tax that had drawn the ire of tech CEOs south of the border.

Carney is sacrificing an opportunity for real, domestic innovation in technology to serve the public good because he’s too focused on short-term growth.

He could seize on the tensions with the US to take another path. Instead he’s chasing the hype.

His gamble is that being friendly to the tech industry will drive economic growth in Canada—the only metric that seems to matter to the former central banker. In the process, he appears ready to hand over the country’s research agenda to an industry that fuels financial bubbles for its own benefit, expands the scope of surveillance, and is incentivized to hook the public in order to maximize engagement and profits. Technology can indeed serve the public good, but only if it is developed with that purpose. Carney’s agenda will allow existing tech harms to fester while new ones are birthed, forcing all of us to pay the price of the industry’s reckless efforts to maximize power and profit at all costs. We can take a different path, but it’s clear the government will not do that unless it faces pressure to change course.

‪@ralencar.com‬:

In the end of the day Carney will always be an investment banker and not a Statesman! Very shameful…..

@mcopelov.bsky.social‬:

Again, the signal feature of these greedy AI charlatans is that they are & completely uninterested in doing the daily hard work of teaching and research for which there is no substitute, never has been, & never will be in education.

‪‪@shengokai.bsky.social‬:

Something that I have been thinking about with attribution of “PhD level intelligence” or “PhD level expertise” to a machine is that it reflects an increasing trend among these AI bros and their sycophants to want the products of highly skilled training without actually doing any of the work.

‪@shana-nola.bsky.social‬:

And, you know, accelerating global warmingand water scarcitywhile they’re at it