ROTHENBURGER – Artificial intelligence is with us, and we aren’t ready for it

ON A MID-DECEMBER DAY in 1903, a flying machine built by Orville and Wilbur Wright lifted into the air and stayed there for just under a minute. It took more than 20 years before aircraft safety regulations were put in place.

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg sat in his Harvard dorm room inventing Facebook. Almost 20 years later, legislators are trying to figure out how to regulate it.

Those two examples were provided Thursday by B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael McEvoy as he described the challenges ahead of us with artificial intelligence, or AI.

“It does sometimes take a while for us to catch up,” he told a packed Grand Hall at the 7^th annual Privacy and Security Conference at TRU.

The conference was entitled “AI: True or False Sense of Security.” For 20 minutes or so, it might have been called, “How do we get Zoom working?” as staff tried to figure out how to get McEvoy connected to the room. Maybe they should have asked Siri.

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Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.