Want the Federal Government to Hear Your Thoughts on AI?

Citizen Lab senior fellow Cynthia Khoo spoke with the CBC about the People’s Consultation on AI, launched by a civil society coalition last week in response to the federal government’s “national sprint” on AI. The independent initiative decries the short timeline of the “mad 30-day rush” to inform national policy and its overreliance on industry opinion. 

“It didn’t really seem like a fair fight when you put them next to, you know, these multibillion[-dollar] technology companies who are chomping at the bit just to adopt [AI] all the way and without any regulatory guardrails,” says Khoo.

Khoo also took issue with the language around AI policy in Canada, noting “With all this talk of Canadian digital sovereignty, is anyone stopping to ask, well, what is that supposed to mean compared to Indigenous digital sovereignty or Indigenous [land] sovereignty?”