CHARBONNEAU – Like all machines, AI must conform to us

ONE THING I LEARNED from a course I took in industrial design is that tools, machinery and furniture should be designed to work for us.

We wouldn’t buy an uncomfortable chair just because the salesperson told us we would get used to it.

There’s a lot of hype around artificial intelligence and how we need to adjust to it or be left behind — bamboozled and dominated by it.

Canadians are being labelled as backward for resisting “a culture of openness to technological change.”

An IPSOS survey of 28 countries found that Canadians are among the most negative toward AI – only the French fared worse.

We are not negative, we are cautious. We sensibly question a product that aims to pour money into the pockets of Big Tech.

I am not a Luddite. Technology has improved our lives when we adopt it.

Prof. Marcel O’Gorman, director of the Critical Media Lab at the University of Waterloo, warns that AI is a product of Big Tech that wants us to get used to AI. He says:

“While an impatient AI economy bears down on Canadian policy makers, businesses and individuals, Canadians should be demanding opportunities for AI adoption that do not restrict our freedom or endanger our planet’s well-being – not to mention the livelihoods of people around the globe who are labouring in precarious conditions to keep AI productivity alive for the wealthiest (Globe and Mail, June 23, 2024).”

And AI is not as clever as some would have us believe. Professor O’Gorman adds:

“But the rules of the AI race are not bound to human values, equity or planetary fitness. Nor is generative AI as we know it today a product of science or creative ingenuity.”

It becomes obvious that AI is a commercial product when compared to other American giants like Meta and Google. Watch for AI products for sale on the market.

Then there is the issue of taxation on technology. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has been dithering over a digital tax for years.

Meanwhile, Canada has forged with its own digital services tax, much to the chagrin of the U.S. which threatens retaliation.

We are not unreasonable. Canada has indicated a willingness to repeal its digital tax once a global agreement is reached. But why shouldn’t corporations, who profit from Canadians, be taxed in Canada?

At its heart, artificial intelligence is a commercial product being developed in the U.S. Like the early dreams that the internet would create a global village of happy people, AI promotes a promise that is backed profit-making.

Economics has long presumed that new technology, while disruptive, ultimately yields net welfare gains for society. Maybe, maybe not.

There are examples where that is true when it is adopted.

Henry Ford’s assembly line killed off a whole industrial ecosystem in horse-drawn transportation, from grooms to street-sweepers. But it ended up creating far more and better-paid jobs, for auto workers, sales agents, and mechanics.

But it’s hard to see where the commercial products of Big Tech, including AI, will benefit ordinary Canadians at all.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.