Much as I like Pride & Prejudice I find it impossible to deny that this is the greatest review of it of all time

so cool that the canadian government plans to spend billions of dollars to encourage people to use not just a bullshit machine, but a mass death and suicide machine

Have those leading the charge not read Ewert v Canada? Or perhaps Parliament will amend correctional services legislation so that reliable evidence is no longer required for decisions affecting incarcerated folks. Admin justice, procedural fairness, substantive equality are all seemingly abandoned.

I'll bet this "consultation's" results are not evaluated by civil servants but, instead, will be "summarized" by the same LLMs used in last fall's AI sprint. Why even bother with this performance, except to manufacture consent? I suspect @starlingcentre.bsky.social experts have insights.

This is exactly it. The work is the point.

Canada has unveiled its long-awaited national AI strategy, but experts say key questions around regulation, privacy, and accountability remain unanswered. Can Ottawa translate its AI ambitions into public confidence? https://thewalrus.ca/canada-ai-plan/

Labour's Baroness Smith announces an AI conversation tool to help jobseekers find jobs in a market where people are worried about losing jobs to AI So AI bot doing the job of job coaches at job centres, to help job seekers find jobs being replaced by AI 🤷‍♂️

*weeping* Please, no more. Please stop putting unless “AI” into random things. Please, have mercy. Let me just have analogue pants. Please?

Carney assures Canadians that AI the fastest way to give all our money to US billionaires

The Walrus invited me to share initial impressions, alongside the awesome Starling Centre crew (eg Alissa Centivany, @jredden.bsky.social, @lukestark.bsky.social) & others. "AI for All" seems less an optimistic promise than a threat. The real slogan is: "AI will be adopted until morale improves." 🧵

The 1st issue invites authors, esp. those who have already published work on computing history, to write on older & newer approaches, what the study has accomplished or on what they think it needs to do next. Pls send 200–500 word abstracts to [email protected] by Feb 1, 2027 for consideration.

Canadian employers are paying the price after AI proves unable to replace laid off staff www.theglobeandmail.com/business/car...

NEW from @natashabulowski.bsky.social and myself www.nationalobserver.com/2026/06/04/n...

Describing these facilities as data centres abstracts away important, well known effects. Thinking of them instead as a cross between an industrial factory and a mine (energy use, carbon emissions, waste water that resembles tailings, spent compute components) helps materialize their impacts.

A sober take from @shachikurl.bsky.social of Angus Reid Institute of how Canadians are not on side with Mark Carney’s enthusiastic approach to AI or data centres. They aren’t uninformed or illiterate; they simply experience the sides of AI the government prefers not to focus on.

By Jim Benton

Persepolis - Eye of the Tiger (2007)

One of the things lost in the "strategy" (vs legislative) approach to AI is that there is no opportunity for public debate, hearing, scrutiny, redrafting. Canada is instead going all in on AI based on an LLM-processed consultative "sprint".

While in Australia, I met civil servants who noted (and experienced) this risk immediately, even as they were pushed to use CoPilot. Arguably this is a core effect of AI use, not a "side effect". Spells trouble for students, workers, and critical thinking everywhere ... but sure boosts AI firms.

"The federal government intends to work with AI providers to help Canadian post-secondary students access AI agents from trusted providers." "AI literacy" isn't a thing, but literal literacy is and this will just make it worse while lining the pockets of a few tech bros www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

hilarious for carney’s AI press conference to be in front of a bunch of medical workers weeks after the ontario auditor general reveal AI “scribes” to transcribe doctor’s appointments are wrong most of the time

In the strategy, First Nations are mentioned twice, once as a group vaguely consulted, then again as a group being served by health AI research. To be clear, all submissions made in the development of this strategy (not consultation) were analyzed by AI. www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news...

This part drives me nuts, not least because a lot of technologies that fall under "AI" can do really cool things. And yet such useful technologies are being used to impart virtue on a whole bunch of snake oil and scam artists.

wild how this entire "strategy" is just a document outlining how the federal government is partnering with corporations to create dependancies on their products. There's no option for people to say "no thanks", only "YOU MUST ADOPT AI [or else]". Imagine replacing "AI" with "tobacco" in this doc...

L’échelle géographique dans la gouvernance de l’IA : Les points forts et les lacunes de la recherche et les implications politiques. aifortherestofus.ca/wp-content/u...

I recommend anyone who doesn't understand the backlash to datacenters go spend 24 hours standing outside of xAI's facility in Memphis. No earplugs. No masks. Just you and the air that Elon provides. Also remember: He said they would build a water treatment facility but they aren't.

Lots to review, but one overarching philosophical reaction: Believing a technology is “inevitable” and that we should approach it with “humility”, while also crafting a $2.3B government plan to spur development, adoption and use of that technology, is a peculiar combination of views.

Marjane Satrapi, the renowned French-Iranian graphic novelist (author of Persepolis), film director, and fearless voice for feminism, human rights and freedom, has passed away at the age of 56. 💔

A pressing issue tackled in my Regulating AI course @mcgill.ca -- massive data centre proposed for Olds, AB. A critical issue we discussed was a total lack of concern for the duty to consult. This is treaty 6, 7 and 8 territory, but you wouldn't know it from this report. www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

Oslo Pride video 🥹 🏳️‍🌈 #Pride #LoveIsLove

A company that makes a no-tech, repairable tractor is having trouble keeping up with demand from farmers sick of John Deere's repair monopoly and simply want a tractor that turns on and works: www.404media.co/demand-is-bo...

New joint publication by @citizenlab.ca + @cancivlib.bsky.social! In which @kate-ro.bsky.social & I join forces w/ Tamir @digitalprivacy.ca to explain the federal govt's many... "(Un)forced Errors: Analysis of Proposed Surveillance Law Expansion under Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access" 🧵1/x

I mentioned this in an interview yesterday. Much of the case for the push for AI in Canada rests on a productivity argument. And so far that argument is largely built on faith.

Mark my words: this will be a logistical and privacy nightmare. www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?...

Super interesting study of ventilation & air filtration and their relation to infection progression/severity. Innovation for good, technology for the people.

Welcome to Scamerica

Tonight, hours before our election count begins, USC's admin formally ran to the Trump federal NLRB asking them to overturn democracy. This shit is wildly cynical and has huge implications for academic workers nationally and I am begging my journalist followers to get in touch

“Artificial intelligence is turning out to be far more expensive than anyone expected, …” … … www.cnbc.com/2026/05/29/-... 🫠🫠🫠

Can't wait for this to happen to my CRA account after the government of Canada optimizes it for our brave new AI world.

🇪🇺 Meet EuroOffice, Europe’s bold alternative to Microsoft 365, promising sovereignty and control It is based on OnlyOffice and offers a near-like-for-like experience as Microsoft for free. Something for everyone to check out, not only Europeans.

It's hard for a country to claim to be independent while running on MMAGA (Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon). cybernews.com/tech/microso...

Ah, look. Angus Reid has polled Canadians on attitudes to AI just before the Carney government rolls out its big AI strategy. The results are not pretty for AI (and PM Techno-Optimist.) #CdnPoli angusreid.org/ai-regulatio...

Gorgeous highlights from a recent trip to Sydney, Australia. Miss the small and big things, from art deco tiles & banksia to massive figs and of course the friendly neighbourhood ibis. ❤️

One of the more misogynistic takes currently trending in the AI policy space is "women use less AI than men because they have less tech literacy" Ok but have you considered that women use less AI than men because we have more tech literacy?

"Since launching its climate strategy, its energy investments returned 10 per cent annually, compared to 8 per cent from a global oil index — a gap that amounts to almost $4 billion above what investing in oil companies would have generated."

businesses: we’re finding all this AI spending isn’t really paying off and we’re thinking it might be time to pull back public: it’s hard to tell what’s real anymore with all this AI slop and some of my friends are acting pretty weird mark carney: WE MUST SPEED UP AI ADOPTION FOR THE ECONOMY

Florida's attorney general filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chairman Sam Altman, alleging that the AI startup’s ChatGPT is unsafe. It contends that ChatGPT has provided assistance for mass shootings, and poses addiction and suicide risks to users.

Lotta people going straight for disbarment, here, but until there's vocation-wide rules in place, i think judges should use 3 tiers to really make a point: 1st offense: Sanction; get out of my sight & redo this mess 2nd: case dismissed, fines, & temp removal from practice 3rd: disbarment referral

Today Microsoft moved all its GitHub copilot subscribers to token-based billing. If you want to see what happens when people have to pay the actual costs of AI, the day is finally here. It's obvious that every customer sees the deep, meaningful value and isn't angry at all.

🤝 IVADO est fier d'accueillir Retraite Québec au sein de sa communauté! Un partenariat ancré dans une vision commune : mettre la science des données et l' #IA au service des citoyen(ne)s et du Québec. En savoir plus 👉 ivado.ca/2026/05/27/r... #MembreIVADO #Innovation #IAR3