Welcome to Inside Policy Talks, the flagship video podcast of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

In this episode, I am joined by Ryan Khurana, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and Machine Learning Lead at MLSE. In this role, he is responsible for leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning technologies to enhance the organization’s media production and fan engagement strategies. He has previously served as a research fellow at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, Associate Editor at Palladium Magazine, and Chief of Staff at WOMBO Studios Inc.

We are here today to talk about Artificial intelligence. Or as I like to say, artificial, yes, intelligent, no. There is much warranted and unwarranted hype and concern alike for artificial intelligence in its many applications.

It holds great economic and productivity promise, as perhaps the fourth industrial revolution, as well as peril, with some speculating that we will enter the singularity and be replaced, to more realistic and already present realities, such as those of job loss and transformation, and other threats to human well-being and dignity: from the deployment of psychologically manipulative and addictive algorithms, to the effects on health and welfare from an omnipresent technology-saturated and mediated environment, in which we are increasingly online, and potentially disconnected and unhealthy.

After having attempted to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable hopes and concerns, we look to the regulatory environment. In particular to Canada’s Artificial intelligence and data act, and to how Canada may foster an environment conducive to innovation, while ensuring and enhancing human dignity.