SRI policy researchers David Baldridge and Jamie Amarat Sandhu trace the landscape of recent global AI safety initiatives—from Bletchley to Hiroshima and beyond—to see how governments and public policy experts are envisioning new ways of governing AI as rapid advancements in the technology continue to present challenges to policymakers.

Amidst today’s broad social impacts of data, we must pay specific attention to the risks posed by facial recognition technology, writes Daniel Konikoff, who argues that Bill C-27’s failure to classify biometric data as sensitive suggests that the bill has an unstable grasp on our tricky technological present.

Want to learn more about Canada’s Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems? SRI Policy Researchers David Baldridge and Jamie Sandhu comment on the Code’s characteristics and shortcomings after its recent release following a summer of significant developments concerning generative AI.

There are economic and political incentives for AI companies to create their own set of rules. Alyssa Wong explores the benefits and drawbacks of self-regulation in the tech industry, and highlights the ultimate need for democratic oversight to ensure accountability, transparency, and consideration of public interests.

We’re using AI assistants and large language models everywhere in our daily lives. But what constitutes this interaction between person and machine? SRI Graduate Affiliate Davide Gentile writes about the virtues and pitfalls of user experience, highlighting some ways in which the human-computer interaction could be made clearer, more efficient, more trustworthy, and overall a better experience—for everyone.

University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton—the computer scientist ‘known as the Godfather of AI’—explains why, after a lifetime spent developing a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, he is suddenly warning about existential threats to humanity.

Canada took an important step towards effectively regulating artificial intelligence when Parliament completed its second reading of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act in April 2023. But there is still much to do to ensure that this agile regulatory framework is put to effective use.

Is AI development moving too fast? In a panel on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, SRI Director and Chair Gillian Hadfield was joined by Jeremie Harris and Pedro Domingos to discuss what risks AI poses to humanity, and what we should do about it.

The potentials of generative AI technologies are exciting, but they come with new sets of risks, observes SRI Policy Lead Phil Dawson, and enterprises must develop new strategies for third-party risk management to navigate the emergent challenges associated with these systems.

The rise of AI language models highlights the need for digital literacy skills to manage the vast amounts of information to which people are exposed, write Valérie Kindarji and Wendy H. Wong. The authors explain why digital literacy is a necessary framework to function in a tech-driven world, and a critical pillar of democracy.

The rise of ChatGPT is challenging our approaches to teaching and assessing writing in the liberal arts and sciences, writes SRI Faculty Affiliate Rhonda McEwen, who argues that generative AI technologies are here to stay and should be part of the world for which we prepare our students.

SRI Associate Director Peter Loewen argues that to unlock the value of artificial intelligence for the public sector, governments must double down on the importance of human and democratic values.