The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge

00:00 And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Thursday, it's your turn and the random renter. 00:09 Your turn is all about AI. Where's your latest feeling on artificial intelligence? That's coming right up. 00:26 And hello there. Welcome to Thursday. Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of Your Turn. 00:34 And the question this week was all about artificial intelligence. You know, there's been a lot of talk on this in the last week or so after suggestions that we're, well, we're all going to die because of AI. Now, do you see that as alarmist? 00:49 Do you see it as possibly true? Or do you see it somewhere in the middle? 00:56 That's what I wanted to hear from you, and you did not fail us. Once again, lots of letters coming in to the Mansbridge podcast, and we're glad to share them with you today. 01:09 As long as you're also ready to hear the random renter, because he's going to be by with his thoughts on AI. 01:18 That's coming up a little later. 01:20 So let's get right at it. We're starting this week with David Power in Cambridge, Ontario. 01:28 My fear with AI is not AI itself. It is the humans controlling AI that concern me. 01:35 Instead of using this to improve humanity, someone will use it to become the next king of the world. We are doing a great job killing each other without AI. 01:48 Evan Panton from North Vancouver. 01:51 I'd like to think that we're still far from the point where AI will go from chatbots who help summarize emails to Terminators who start killing us all, a la James Cameron. 02:06 James Cameron, Canadian director of Titanic, Aliens, and the Terminator movies, among others. 02:14 But then I can't be totally certain about that. For now, the most practical course of action would probably include establishing safeguards for the industries that are threatened and to limit or at least drastically slow down exploratory and tentative development. 02:31 Art Bell. Art writes to us from Burlington, Vermont, just across the border. He used to be in Brantford, Ontario. 02:42 He writes, we didn't legislate, control, or introduce transparency to social media, spam mail, and spam calls. Our track record on all these is 100% failure. We have not put guardrails or safeguards on any of these intrusions into our life, and this is exactly what will happen attempting to legislate AI. Not one thing. It's about money, not safety. 03:10 Melanie Gilleen or Geelan in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, and Labrador. 03:19 AI is what we teach it to be. It's a reflection of human intelligence and consciousness, and we cannot separate ourselves from it. It can be good and evil. Whatever way it goes is up to us. 03:35 Caroline Schweitzer in Stouffville, Ontario. 03:38 I find the idea of this the stuff of nightmares. 04:08 Neil Douglas Fraser in Edmonton. 04:12 I feel like this unregulated race to develop superior AI is oddly similar to that of nuclear weapon development in World War II. 04:21 The whole, we have to do it before someone else does it mentality doesn't seem to have a great track record in society. Just ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 04:32 Eve Perry in Vancouver. 04:35 Prime Minister Carney's call for coordination through a technology stability board may offer promise. 04:41 The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency, achieves 99% collection rates. 04:48 Its 176 member states share immense stakes in commercial shipping, international AI governance, perhaps might mimic this. 04:59 At home, binding legislation similar to the EU's AI Act may better boost domestic capacity while safeguarding democracy, rule of law, and environmental stewardship. 05:13 Briefly, I'm just going to add this, the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act says that unacceptable risk is prohibited. 05:21 And it lists several unacceptable risks. And it says the providers of AI are responsible for making sure there are no unacceptable risks. 05:34 Esther Ewing. 05:41 Sorry, I just had a coughing fit there. 05:48 So let's get to Esther Ewing. Esther Ewing. 05:53 All right, Esther, we're going to get this right yet. 05:56 Esther's in Gravenhurst, Ontario. That's on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. 06:04 According to news reports in July, AI agents at the company OpenAI started working outside of the safety parameters set up by human programmers and hacked another AI company. The company was Hugging Face. We'll hear it referenced in other letters today. 06:21 It took the humans at OpenAI more than a week to figure out what had happened and then shut it down. 06:28 What if they had undertaken some serious criminal or treasonous activity? 06:34 I worry that our federal government is seriously behind in regulating AI activity. 06:43 Tom Davis in Brockville, Ontario. 06:47 Worried? Yes. But not about rogue AI. The end of humanity won't be the machine's idea. It'll be ours. 06:55 Anthropic recently disrupted five cases of users pushing clode, that's one of the AI providers, toward biological weapons work. 07:08 Subtle are still bad actors using AI to warp our shared sense of reality until neighbors turn on neighbors over things that never happened. 07:17 Can't believe it could happen. Just look south of the border. Regulate AI like nuclear weapons. 07:26 Marilyn Wallace, Fannie Bay, B.C. 07:29 My AI journey began with great trepidation. As a teacher, I had concerns about AI's impact on the cognitive development of younger generations. 07:38 But my son, who works in the AI industry, convinced me there were benefits to consider. 07:45 However, recent sinister predictions about rogue AI agents who could be completely out of control are terrifying. 07:56 Pierre Roy in Ottawa. 07:58 I became aware of recent AI developments two weeks ago with the Hugging Face report. This development scares the bejesus out of me. 08:08 I fear that very soon there will be nothing we can do to stop them. 08:14 Gareth Wilson in Bowmanville, Ontario. 08:18 Researchers inside the AI world see as an inevitability that because models are learning at such speeds, at some point human input will cease. 08:28 We need to slow down and develop guardrails. 08:31 The impact on all of us is real in a world where the Internet touches everything we do. 08:39 Tim Stott in Minnesota, Manitoba. Haven't heard from Tim for a while. 08:45 Kinnesota is on the western shore of Lake Manitoba, about two and a half hours northwest of Winnipeg. 08:53 Tim writes, AI is inevitable now that the cat is out of the bag. However, it's happened before. 09:01 It's all new to us like the automobile or the steam engine once was or the airplane or go back to the invention of the wheel. It's new. It's scary. We don't understand it and people will take advantage of it because that's what people do with new things. Eventually it will find a balance and rules will be in place and enforced. Until then, hold on for the ride. 09:25 Michael Fitzpatrick in Calgary. 09:28 AI is not artificial intelligence. It is alien intelligence. 09:34 We do not have the ability or wisdom to monitor, direct control of this beast, which is poised to become our apex predator. 09:42 This is not hyperbole. Too many insiders are now sounding the alarm. It's not the time to listen, it's the time to act. So, shut down the data centers. 09:55 Kristen Geeta in Lankford, B.C. 09:59 I think AI will probably be good for humanity, but we shouldn't proceed with our heads in the sand. I'm more worried about what humans will do with AI than AI becoming evil on its own. 10:10 Canada has a real opportunity if we can cut through fear-mongering and distraction. Good conversation, expert advice, and a strong, flexible state matter. 10:21 Every major leap has this push and pull. This may be our biggest, but it won't be our last. Ken Peloshock in Neustadt, Ontario. 10:34 The hugging face incident is proof we're able or unable to control or predict AI's outcome. 10:43 My job as a programmer has evolved into AI babysitter. 10:48 I'm frequently surprised by how clever or dumb these models are, and I'm unsure which is more frightening. Cutting-edge frontier AI ought to be handled in a restricted lab like viruses. 11:02 Our current publicly available models can be refined and tweaked as we learn to live with these Frankenstein monsters. 11:13 Kevin Whitewall in Calgary. 11:18 I'm not sure, Kevin, if I got that last name right. 11:23 Kevin says he's a retired education technologist. 11:29 Canadians are at a critical point in shaping AI's future. We must raise Galileos, not Terminators. 11:36 As AI agents gain independence, AI itself must help monitor ethical boundaries, prevent harm, and shut down rogue agents. We must nurture intelligence that is loving, kind, and responsible. 11:51 Agents that reflect the Canadians we aspire to be. For a bright future, Canada must actively shape AI, not simply let it happen to us. 12:05 Brent Harris in St. John, New Brunswick. 12:09 I agree with Arthur C. Clarke, who's a British science fiction writer, and his three laws when he says in law number three, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 12:27 Magic can terrify us. 12:30 Currently, we are concerned about the dangers of this technological progress and because we don't fully understand its limits. 12:39 But science fiction writers have inspired our imagination for good as well as apocalyptic. 12:46 Think of the computers in Star Trek rather than Skynet in Terminator. 12:56 Remember that. 12:57 If you didn't follow the Terminator movies, remember the word Skynet. It's going to come up again in this program. 13:08 Mark Manchester in Toronto. 13:11 I'm intrigued by the possibilities of AI, as I was with PCs, cell phones, and the internet. 13:19 Can you believe it? It wasn't that long ago. None of those existed. We didn't know anything. We'd never heard those words. 13:27 It really wasn't that long ago. 13:31 I mean, people still get a kick out of running that clip of me on The National in, I don't know what year it was, 93, 94, somewhere, where we had a feature documentary done by the great Bill Cameron on what was being called the Internet. 13:54 Right? It was a word we hadn't used before. We had never used it on The National. Right? 14:00 And so the introduction to the documentary included a line, something like, from me. 14:08 So here's Bill Cameron now with a look at what's called the internet. 14:16 That's the way I kind of said it. Like it was the first time it had come out of my mouth. 14:23 It was... 14:25 It was funny. 14:27 Funny. 14:29 Anyway, where are we? We're in the middle of Mark's, Manchester's letter. Let's start it again. I'm intrigued by the possibilities of AI as I was with PCs, cell phones, and the internet. 14:42 I was and am a techno nerd. I'm a film tech, a problem solver using many resources, some outside the boxes. 14:50 I have seen drawings created on chat GPT using... 14:54 scant information to create rigging diagrams. I use GPS every day. It needs AI to monitor, refresh, otherwise impossible. It's a mini miracle of tech. 15:06 Let us move cautiously forward, together. 15:11 Fran Wallace in Victoria. 15:15 AI is not going to go away. The weaponization of AI is currently a race between the big three, China, Russia, and the US. 15:24 They dare not abandon it, because whoever gets it fully operational first will dominate the world. 15:32 That is what is at stake. 15:36 Unfortunately, ethics get shunted aside in this developmental process. 15:42 It also ignores the degradation AI processing causes to our already fragile environment. 15:50 The public has no say in the matter. 15:54 Roderick Morrison in Victoria says, People predicting the future must always be treated with skepticism. There are obvious business motives behind alarmist reports surfacing as Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for their IPOs, their initial public offerings. 16:14 Surely some staff believe what they are saying, just as people who worked on nuclear power and nuclear weapons in previous generations quit their jobs as conscientious objectors, citing certain destruction of civilization if we were to continue development of these technologies. 16:32 Still, we need to be cautious. 16:37 John Braun in Okotoks, Alberta. 16:41 I think it is hype. 16:43 AI does not have control of the systems or people to destroy civilization in a decade. I do not believe they will ever be given that type of control. I guess the question is, will they take that control? 17:03 Let's get a couple more in here before we take our break and hear from the random ranter. 17:10 Lots of letters this week, so let's keep them going here. 17:14 Martin Barron in Toronto. 17:17 AI is an extraordinarily powerful tool. It gives bad actors the ability to deceive and manipulate huge numbers of people for negligible cost. 17:28 Science fiction has been warning us for a century that the trouble starts when AI impersonates humans. 17:35 AI's prime directive should be never to impersonate human identity or authorship. 17:42 Systems should recognize when they are being asked to do so and refuse. 17:49 Doug Clark in Castlegar, BC. That's where the Kootenai River meets the Columbia River. 17:57 That's a historic meeting place, right? 18:01 Doug writes, unrestrained, AI could trigger the worst disaster the world has ever seen. 18:08 However, to be effective, any restrictions would have to be enforceable and agreed to by every country in the world. 18:16 Will that ever happen? 18:18 No. 18:21 Michael Artendale in Sudbury, Ontario. 18:24 In the movie Oppenheimer, they said that a nuclear detonation had a non-zero chance of igniting the atmosphere. 18:33 AI also has a non-zero chance of destroying us. 18:37 That means strong regulations, like in the nuclear industry, are needed to prevent it. 18:50 Quick fact check here. The actual dialogue... 18:54 in the movie Oppenheimer, has J. Robert Oppenheimer telling General Leslie Groves that the probability of atmospheric ignition is near zero, prompting the general to famously reply, zero would be nice. 19:15 There is no historical record of this being an actual conversation between the two men. 19:21 None of this takes away from your point, Michael. 19:28 Okay. Let's take our break. 19:33 You know, I'm really enjoying these letters, as I do every week, because people say, you know, why do you do this? 19:42 Why do you give Thursday show to people writing in? 19:49 And why do you ask for names and locations and all that and kind of restrict the amount you can write, you know, the 75 words thing? 20:00 Here's why I do it. 20:04 You know, when I look at comments boards online, there's so much garbage in them, right? From bots, from people who refuse to use their names, who just want to take pot shots at whomever. 20:20 Could be the broadcaster, could be the subject, could be somebody who was interviewed. 20:26 I mean, it's... 20:29 It's always like that. It's not always like that. There's always also some good stuff in comments. 20:36 But what I look for this way, and what I've received so far, is for people to think about what they want to say, boil it down to a focus, and address the question being asked. 20:53 And what do I get in return? That's exactly what I get in return. 20:59 And asking for names and locations helps that. Locations really helps things because it gives you a reflection of how the country in some fashion, or at least the listeners of The Bridge from across the country, and they are across the country and often across the world, are feeling about whatever the subject is. 21:20 And I really like that. 21:23 I think Thursdays, You know, it's really come along. It used to be kind of a low number in terms of the number of downloads and listeners that the podcast gets each week. It used to be a low number. 21:39 Now it's right up there with the other days. I mean, the big ones are Monday and Friday, Dr. Stein on Mondays, and Good Talk on Fridays. But everything is up. Everything's been up in the last, I don't know, year and a half. 21:58 I see we're still, I was looking at it yesterday, the number one political podcast that Apple puts out in Canada, and that's all political podcasts. The American ones, you know, the European ones, and the Canadian ones, we're number one. 22:18 We're almost always in the top three. 22:22 But we've been consistently number one since we came back. And that's nice to know. It doesn't mean everybody likes us. 22:29 It means that people listen. 22:33 And, you know, they react. 22:37 And part of that reaction is what we hear every week on your turn. 22:43 But there's more to Thursday than your turn and your letters. There's also the random ranter. 22:49 We're going to take our break, but when we come back... We'll hear from the renter himself. That's right after this. 23:06 And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Thursday episode. That's your turn and the random ranter right here on Sirius XM channel 160. New channel on Sirius XM, if that's the way you listen. And I know a lot of people listen in their cars, in their trucks. We have a lot of truckers who listen to us as they crisscross the country and the continent. 23:28 And aren't shy about letting me know their feelings on various subjects. I'll tell you that. 23:33 But that's how you tune in. Channel 160. That's Canada Talks on Sirius XM. Or on your favorite podcast platform. We mentioned Apple, Spotify. I mean, they're all out there. 23:46 And so enjoy where you do. Most people who listen to The Bridge listen on Apple. I think it's about 75% of our listeners are Apple listeners. 23:57 Okay. 24:02 Let's, well, why don't we hear from the random ranter? You think he might have a few things to say about AI? 24:10 You betcha. 24:16 On the scale of disruptive technology, AI is completely unlike anything we've ever seen. And throughout history, we've seen a lot. I mean, think about the changes to society brought on by the steam engine, the printing press, or for that matter, electricity. 24:34 Transformational technologies have been reorganizing the way we live, the way we build things, grow things, and even interact with each other since time immemorial. It's like change is baked into our DNA, because no matter what, we always seem to be striving to find new ways to do things and then adapting to build something better. Now we've come up against the literal agents of change in AI. And despite our history of embracing new things and coming out on top, I don't think we're up for this one. 25:06 Why do I feel this way? Well, there's no shortage of issues with the technology. It's an environmental disaster. It requires ungodly amounts of both energy and fresh water at precisely the time we're facing global warming, groundwater depletion and drought. Then there's the societal impact. I mean, it's pretty fair to say that the Industrial Revolution was hugely disruptive to humanity, but in the grand scheme of things, it lasted 100 years. That's a lot of time for people to adapt. 25:39 ChatGPT? It isn't even four years old yet, and look what's happening. At that speed, change can be more than disruptive. It can be catastrophic. But here we are anyways, barreling down the mountain with no brakes. 25:54 I mean, we're on the precipice of an AI revolution where millions will potentially lose not just their way of life, but perhaps even their reason for being. We're in a time where the information age is morphing into an AI-driven age of disinformation. where the fake news is becoming the very believable deep fake news, and the truth is becoming just another opinion. 26:20 But apparently that's not the worst of it, because while I used to think that societal upheaval was the scary part about AI, this week a bunch of heavy-hitting tech bros came out of the woodwork raising alarm bells and even predicting the potential end of humanity. 26:37 Coming from the experts, that's something that should get everyone's attention. I mean, let me put their warning into perspective. These tech guys raising the alarms, they're not the crying wolf types, and they're certainly not altruists. They've been willingly working on AI, knowing just how destructive it could be. The rich getting exponentially richer, mass unemployment, people using the technology for all kinds of ill-begotten gains, none of that has bothered them. 27:08 So what's driving them to do the right thing now? It's unadulterated fear. They're scared, scared at the technology's quickly evolving ability to function not just without us, but against us. And they're losing control. And I think what's scaring them the most is they're losing the ability to even detect when they're losing control. Now, I don't know about you, but I never imagined the ultimate life imitates art moment would end up being Skynet. 27:39 But apparently, here we are, and at the worst possible time. Because while the AI tech bros are begging to be reined in with guardrails, the guardrail people are a bunch of greedy buffoons with their heads stuck up Wall Street's aspirations. 27:56 This is a distinctly American problem, and in the history of mankind and problems, there's never been a more unqualified, irresponsible person in charge to solve it than Trump. From the memes to the slop, Trump loves AI, especially for what it's done to the stock market. And I mean, for him, the stock market is everything. It's the measure of his success. And honestly, it's the only thing that's gone right for him his entire term. So he's all in on the AI stock bubble and he'll risk anything and everything to keep that bubble going. 28:31 Let's just hope that when it bursts, it doesn't take anything and everything with it. 28:41 Okay, you heard it. 28:44 That's the ranter's take. 28:46 Now, as we've heard in our letters, there are opposing opinions to that. 28:52 And there are opposing fact claims to some of that as well. 29:01 But he's our man, the random rander, and I know that many of you love the rander, even when you disagree with him, because he does what we try to do on this program. He provokes thought. 29:15 He gets you thinking. 29:18 And he's done that once again this week. 29:22 Right here on the bridge, on Thursdays, your turn. 29:28 All right. 29:29 Let's keep rocking here. 29:31 Let's keep rocking in the real world. 29:35 Albert Curian in Vancouver. 29:39 I would place myself somewhere in the middle, and that's the middle between being alarmist and being excited about the possibilities. 29:49 I understand AI is an existential threat, but I'm not fully convinced about how immediate that is. 29:57 As the Western world races to catch up with China on AI... China, with its authoritarian ruling Communist Party, has no room for any threat to its reign. 30:07 Therefore, it has the proverbial kill switch. 30:14 What's our equivalent? 30:17 See, there was a U.S. senator yesterday trying to get passed through the U.S. Senate that all AI providers would have to have a kill switch. 30:29 It didn't pass. 30:35 This is interesting. Stephanie Daniluk Fernando in Winnipeg. 30:40 Now, she says she's been creating, editing, and refining data that trains AI models for almost three years now. 30:47 Three years. 30:50 Most of us never even heard of AI three years ago. 30:56 Anyway, here's what she writes. We protect our homes by locking the door. 31:00 We protect our emails by setting strong passwords. And we will practice safe AI use by setting instructions within our AI models at the individual, organizational, and enterprise levels on what to avoid and what is appropriate model behavior. 31:17 Any government legislation would be redundant, and the government should mainly focus on R&D and cybersecurity and establishing our place in the space race. 31:33 You know, speaking of the space race, I've got to be in Ottawa tonight. 31:38 You know who I'm going to meet? 31:40 I'm going to meet Jeremy Hansen. 31:43 Now, there is a hero. 31:46 Right? A Canadian hero. 31:49 Moon man. 31:54 Moving on here. Wendy Cecil in Toronto. I think Wendy, she's a regular, and I think I... 32:03 I've tried out her name in different ways over time. 32:07 Wendy writes, I worry more about the sovereign individuals leading AI's development. 32:12 The tech pro club might agree to slow it down for safety, but what fools we'd be to trust them? 32:18 Sorry, that horse has left the barn. The self-described intelligent high IQ Trump, self-described, okay, has given them absolute freedom to do whatever must be done to dominate. 32:33 There's money to be made and power to be won. Damn the torpedoes and humanity. 32:39 Janice Campbell in Calgary. 32:42 Every day we hear about bad actors, hacking, banking, infrastructure, people's personal accounts, and even federal government agencies. The Internet has transformed our lives, both for good and for bad. 32:57 Now the prospect of artificial intelligence is complicating our lives. AI is a double-edged sword with tremendous potential for both good and evil. The genie has escaped the bottle. Can governments rein it in? Given their record controlling the bad actors on the internet, probably not. 33:17 Pamela McDermott in Burlington, Ontario. 33:23 Dan Rather says, It's the former CBS News anchor. 33:27 He's got a great sub stack, which I refer to every once in a while in The Buzz, the weekend newsletter that you can subscribe to free of charge. 33:40 You just got to go to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter and give us your email. 33:47 Anyway, Dan Rather in his sub stack this week. 33:52 says, there are tough, dangerous decisions to be made here at the beginning of the age of AI, not unlike those made at the beginning of the atomic age. They require thoughtful, intelligent, national leadership. We'd better hope we get it before it's too late. 34:10 I concur and would add that it needs to be a global cooperation. 34:15 Kathleen Irwin in Vancouver. What I don't know and what I don't know that I don't know frightens me, and yet I see how helpful AI can be in the workplace. 34:26 I looked at turning AI off in my Google searches and saw a cautionary. To power features such as scam detection, Chrome can use AI models. 34:36 In a world where AI makes scams easier to detect, do I dare turn it off? 34:45 Mathieu Larocque in Gatineau, Quebec. 34:48 We need international regulations on the use of AI and even more on the development environment to prevent further escapes on the Internet and potentially key infrastructures. 34:59 Financial regulations should be required to prevent AI companies from profiting on AI speculation and from the constant competition to win the AI arms race. 35:10 If not well-regulated, AI will lead to demise of humanity, either literally or intellectually. 35:19 Joel Maxwell in Halifax. It's hocus-pocus. The AI companies are running without any regard to America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 35:29 Toss the CEOs in front of a grand jury and see how fast the existential threat goes away. 35:35 If industry regulators are treating AI liability as any other software company, the threat of prison solves 80% of all concerns. 35:46 FYI, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was enacted in 1986 to address hacking. 35:52 It prohibits unintentionally accessing a computer without authorization or in excess of authorization. 36:02 John Minchell in Comox Valley, B.C. The safe use of AI should be facilitated by an international body which combines the AI companies, governments, and other involved parties and does not just leave it up to the tech companies. 36:16 A framework of regulation established to benefit all participants, such as was done with radio and television, although established beforehand rather than retroactively, would be beneficial in the long run. 36:30 Adam McBurney in Bruce Jack Gold Mining Camp in Northern BC. 36:36 I love hearing from Adam for that very fact that we read the name of where he's writing from. 36:43 A gold mining camp in Northern BC. Bruce Jack. 36:47 I don't doubt what the future of AI regulation should be, but it troubles me greatly that no oversight exists outside of China. 36:55 Every armchair technologist adds to the noise while our primary sources are either bunker-building maniacs or whistleblowers who suddenly discovered a conscience and a new career on the podcast circuit. 37:10 These people are reliable as an AI therapist, and we need to stop looking to them for guidance. 37:20 Ali Reidstra-Handley in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. That's in the Annapolis Valley. 37:26 We need global cooperation and meaningful safeguards to shape AI's future, especially around education, employment, safety and security, military uses, and AI's ability to influence people and governments. As a mother, I worry about the world AI is creating for our children. It's advanced so quickly that it's increasingly difficult to know what's real. 37:49 I need a permit to build a shed in my backyard. Surely technology capable of reshaping society deserves thoughtful rules. 37:58 Good point, Allie. 38:01 Christine Franson in Dundas, Ontario. 38:05 I suspect the hugging face episode is just the tip of the iceberg and that more incidents like this will occur. Without proper regulation, I'm concerned we face significant, unpredictable risks ahead. 38:18 John Henderson in Vancouver. For the future of AI, Canada should be helping build the safety standards for the frontier labs, helping lay international AI governance foundations, for example, pushing for coordination between the U.S. and China, pushing for frontier AI-relevant data centers to be built in Canada to give us leverage as a middle power, and building Canada government capacity in AI generally, for example, by hiring people to think about AI policy. 38:52 Scott Jansen in Osoyuz, British Columbia. Osoyuz, British Columbia. 39:00 We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and therefore thereafter our tools shape us. AI and eventually superintelligence will be mirrors of humanity, our brilliance, our biases, and our morality. Hopefully they exceed us intellectually, but also morally. 39:17 Our greater task, then, is improving ourselves and the systems they inherit. 39:23 an ecology that supports society and a society that supports the economy. 39:29 As Thoreau warned, men have become the tools of their tools. 39:37 Don Dufour in Ottawa. Education. Inform the masses what AI is and how the worldwide build-out will impact our precious environment. Regulation. Here is where I don't know what I don't know. My feeling is that guardrails and regulations need to be established to mitigate the eruption of the AI Wild West. 40:01 Ashley Atill in Ottawa. 40:05 AI safety should not depend on the character of the people building AI. It should depend on systems designed around the fact that humans are fallible. 40:14 I'm less worried about one machine becoming evil than about technological power being concentrated dangerously in too few hands. 40:23 We need checks that assume ambition, pressure, money, and bad judgment will exist and still prevent any one person, company, or government from having unchecked control. 40:36 Ryan Truk in Edmonton. 40:41 It's hard to fear AI ending us when I have yet to see anyone articulate how, but it is changing us. What I do fear is seeing how AI is being used to degrade society, a turn away from the humanity of art, the joy of process. I think AI can and will be useful, but the damage currently being done to people is worth being concerned about. 41:06 On Ben Zvi in Coquitlam, BC, open AI hugging face is a forewarning of AI's Chernobyl potential. 41:16 Imagine our response if a deadly virus had escaped out of lab A and attacked lab B. This is the same. 41:23 Ultimately, AI will be regulated like bio and nuclear with government international oversight sooner or later. 41:32 Carol Hutchinson in Ottawa. I've read and listened to every thought expressed regarding AI. As a result, my considered opinion is found in one word, regulation. 41:43 People everywhere are alarmed and frightened. 41:49 Richard Swindells in Mono, Ontario. 41:53 The public is at risk and our future is in the hands of politicians who do not know... 41:58 the how of AI, and must rely on techies who know enough to realize the world has a major problem. I'd like to hear a discussion on what individuals might do to influence our collective futures. 42:12 Maureen Manning in Nanaimo, BC. If it's allowed to develop without a regulatory framework imposed by governments informed by interest groups in human development, education, and medicine, AI poses a considerable threat to humanity. 42:27 Right now, it's not the greatest threat to humanity. The greatest threat is climate change, and we are living this threat now, as evidenced by catastrophic events in Nepal this summer, and new records set for the size and ferocity of wildfires in B.C. 42:44 Roland D'Souza in Mississauga, Ontario. 42:47 The intentional polarization of the discussion surrounding AI impact distracts us from a serious discussion of the subtle transformation of society that may take place, instead the over-reliance on technology that degrades cognitive functionality and growth of the younger generations as we're now seeing in reading scores. 43:08 This further exacerbates the divide between those that have resources to effectively train their youth and those that do not. 43:19 Chris Hayward in St. Catharines, Ontario. You don't dive into the water before checking the depth first. 43:26 We're getting pushed off the diving board with a blindfold on. 43:31 Larry Swatuck in Sackville, New Brunswick. 43:35 Nothing demotivates people more than yet another claim that the sky is falling. I have no doubt that an unfettered AI will result in all sorts of terrible things. But to claim that it will put an end to civilization simply beggars belief. 43:52 Besides, aren't there enough problems to deal with already? 43:58 Leo Bourdon in Ottawa. Will AI extinguish humanity? 44:03 I'm skeptical. 44:05 Often those who sound this kind of alarm are missing an important part of the equation, humanity fighting back. 44:13 Because even the fiction works of the Matrix or Terminator has us fighting back. 44:19 Sure, AI will become more intelligent than us, but extinguish us? 44:23 We're smarter than bears. But have you seen how a mama bear fights for her cubs? 44:32 Kelly Enden in Fort St. James, B.C., Getting near the end here. 44:40 Kelly Enden in Fort St. James, B.C. This situation isn't unique. It's part of a small government, deregulation, low-tax, market-driven economy in sectors that should never have existed without government oversight or direct involvement. 44:55 Or dare I say, government ownership. 44:59 Everything in this type of economy skews towards maximizing shareholder value and externalizing all the damages to citizens and government. 45:08 It's rich that AI companies are clamoring for oversight now, given how hard they lobbied to keep this from happening. 45:18 Andrew Nevadomskis Nevadomskis in Amaranth, Ontario. It's about 100 kilometers northwest of Toronto. 45:32 I am cautiously optimistic about the future of AI. As with nuclear power, it has the potential for good and bad. The warnings of people in the industry must be taken seriously, but remember some Manhattan Project scientists believed that the bomb would trigger a chain reaction and would destroy the planet. 45:51 What is needed is an organization similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee development and use. 46:03 We've reached that moment where we come to the last letter for this week's Your Turn. 46:11 And it's coming from Regina, my old hometown. 46:15 My old hometown. 46:20 Like a lot of Canadians, I have a lot of hometowns. Because I've moved around the country a lot. 46:26 And Regina was a great home for me. Not for long. 1975 and 1976. 46:37 But this letter comes from Regina. It comes from Kathleen Peterson. AI is terrifying to me. 46:47 The people in charge of its development appear to have the humanity and emotional intelligence of 12-year-old boys playing with Lego, and there's nothing I can do about it. 46:59 If AI can cure cancer, then the tech lords should get busy and do that, rather than scaring everyone with threats of AI killing everyone if they aren't regulated. 47:11 I don't use AI at all, to my knowledge. 47:15 and I've taken care to shut it off on all my devices where I can. 47:20 All I can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. 47:30 Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you to everyone who wrote this week. As always, we have far more letters than we could use, and we try to put forward the ones that that are not only interesting, but will stimulate thought and conversation. 47:50 And we hope we've done that today. I know some of you say you kind of gather the family around and listen to some of the podcasts from the bridge. 48:01 And the Thursday one is one where you get a lot of different opinions and a lot of different thoughts. 48:09 And that provokes conversation. 48:13 And if it does in your household, that's great. 48:17 That's going to do it for today. Tomorrow, end of the week, Friday. 48:21 You know what that means. Good talk. Chantal Hébert and Bruce Anderson will be here. 48:31 And if you haven't got the buzz, if you haven't subscribed to the buzz, try it. 48:39 I just put down, you know, I include in the buzz on Saturday mornings. It goes in your inbox and your email at 7 a.m., Eastern time every Saturday morning. 48:51 And I put in it the articles that I read during the week that I found interesting and got me thinking. 49:03 And so I share those with you. That's all there is to it. Sometimes I tell a few little stories as well. 49:10 But that's basically what the buzz is all about. 49:13 And if you missed it earlier, you can get the buzz by going to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. 49:22 All you have to do is add your email. 49:26 No fee, no charge. 49:29 Some of those articles do have paywalls. There's nothing I can do about that. 49:36 So you either subscribe or you don't. 49:40 and move on. But most of the articles are paywall-free. 49:46 Good journalism costs money. Don't forget that. 49:53 And these days, you get that money to help where you can. 50:01 Okay, that does it for this week. On your turn, but we're back tomorrow with Good Talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. 50:09 We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.