[ad_1]
Two of the three godfathers of AI are professors based in Canada. One of them, Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto, recently left his job at Google to speak more frankly about the risks of artificial intelligence.
Another, Yoshua Bengio of the Université de Montréal, sounded the alarm in a recent open letter calling for a pause in the development of increasingly powerful AI systems.
They include some high-profile names, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who believe it’s time to take a break, if only for six months.
[Read: ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead]
[Read Dan Bilefsky’s 2019 Saturday Profile of Yoshua Bengio: He Helped Create A.I. Now, He Worries About ‘Killer Robots’]
“Because there was an unexpected acceleration – I probably wouldn’t have signed the letter a year ago – so we had to step back, and my opinion on the topic has changed,” said Prof. Bengio on the post. on his blog. “We managed to manage nuclear weapons on a global scale after World War II, we can get the same agreement for AI”
Canada is a long way from signing the law, which is expected to take effect no earlier than 2025. There are still several months needed to establish the bill regulations, C-27, Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, which was introduced last time. June.
In the near term, Canadian privacy regulators are currently at work investigating unspecified complaints that the ChatGPT chatbot is collecting, using or disclosing Canadians’ data without proper consent. On Thursday, the federal privacy commissioner’s office announced that its provincial counterparts in Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta will join the investigation.
“As regulators, we must keep up with – and stay ahead of – the rapid pace of technological progress to protect Canadians’ fundamental privacy rights,” Philippe Dufresne, the privacy commissioner, said in a statement.
The adoption of public AI tools, especially ChatGPT – short for “Generative Pretrained Transformer” – has exploded. Analysts at Swiss bank UBS estimated in a May report that ChatGPT, created by the San Francisco-based company OpenAI, had reached more than 200 million monthly active users in April, doubling from January, although the trend showed signs of plateauing. .
Less than six months later, ChatGPT seems to have mushroomed. It has appeared on campuses as a tool to create courses and has been restricted by universities. It is used to filter romantic prospects on dating apps. And as my colleagues – Times technology columnists Kevin Roose and Emma Goldberg, who cover the future of work for the Business desk – have discovered, these AI chatbots can lead to some pretty trippy conversations.
[Read Kevin’s story: A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled]
[Read Emma’s story: ChatFished: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People With A.I.]
Stock markets got a taste of the more frightening consequences of misused AI earlier this week, when prices plummeted after images showing buildings near the Pentagon appearing to be on fire went viral on the internet. It turned out to be a spoof created by AI.
When pushing the slow development of super AI systems, Prof. Bengio, who is also the founder and scientific director of Mila (also known as the Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence), also called on the Canadian government to speed up its regulatory efforts. .
Valerie Pisano, president and chief executive of Mila, said that there are steps that the government can take – such as requiring appropriate labels to identify AI-generated text, images or sounds – to protect the public from some of the dangers of these technologies, for example. disinformation campaigns during elections and disruptions in the job market.
[Read: A.I.’s Threat to Jobs Prompts Question of Who Protects Workers]
“This technology is coming into our lives, faster than anything we’ve seen before,” said Ms. Pisano told me and said that the regulation is far behind. “This gap creates a disequilibrium that is really worrying.”
Mrs. Pisano, along with academics, researchers and industry leaders in Canada called on the government to increase government oversight through Bill C-27 and to move quickly.
Luke Stark, a researcher on the history and ethics of AI and an assistant professor at Western University in London, Ontario, said he would like to see the privacy commissioner’s investigation carried out in the interim.
“The question of where the material that has been used to train these large language models comes from is clearly a big problem,” Prof Stark said. The problem, he added, “has been somewhat lost in the rush to pursue the technology, to make it better and sicker.”
Trans Canada
-
Voters in Alberta go to the polls on Monday to choose their next prime minister. Ian Austen visited Calgary and traveled through the southern rural areas of Alberta, speaking with Canadian Conservatives who are rethinking their choices after the party’s hard-right turn.
-
Grimes, a Canadian musician and producer, spoke to Joe Coscarelli, culture reporter for The Times, about a new artificial intelligence tool that “open sourced” his voice.
-
For those traveling through Vancouver for the summer weekend, here are some recommendations for restaurants, shopping, places to visit and things to see in the city as part of The Times’ 36 Hours series.
-
The US is competing with Canada and other countries to secure critical minerals needed to make electric cars and other items in the energy transition.
-
Are you a bird watcher, or even a beginner? The Times Science Desk is working on a project with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and sending out reading posts. Learn more here.
Vjosa Isai is a reporter-researcher for The New York Times in Canada. Follow him on Twitter at @lavjosa.
How are you?
We’d love to have your thoughts on this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send to nytcanada@nytimes.com.
Like this email?
Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here.
[ad_2]
Source link