The Canadian 🇨🇦 govt, and its Minister of AI and Innovation, is rushing headlong into full blown AI. All gas, no brakes, no real consultation So we're launching the People’s Consultation on AI You can find out more here 👇: www.peoplesaiconsultation.ca/news-updates/

Dan is absolutely right. It's a gift. It's a mockery of global governance. Canada's participation will only serve to legitimize it. bsky.app/profile/dhne...

www.cbc.ca/news/politic... Remember the 50-year “Whiskey War”over Hans Island? Canada would periodically plant its flag and leave a bottle of whiskey but the Danes would then replace it with their own and a bottle of schnapps. Good neighbours.

Canada’s AI Minister “has been accused of naively embracing AI rather than working to mitigate its harms, and of listening mostly to voices from the tech sector—those who stand to benefit most from rapid AI adoption.” Good article on the issues with Evan Solomon’s approach to tech and AI.

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hayek's (Arguably More Legitimate) Children www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures". Open panel submissions portal is open! ls! Deadline: 2nd February 2026 www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...

Also of interest: stereogum.com/2485199/band...

We've extended the deadline for #SSN2026 submissions to Jan. 21. If you haven't submitted yet, please do so! We look forward to seeing you in Lille, France, in June! SSN is a diverse and welcoming community of scholars. Join us! @survstudiesnet.bsky.social @surveillancemw.bsky.social #surveillance

How can we direct students away from using AI on course assignments and activities? Here's a recap of a workshop I led in November on the topic of "avoiding" AI: cte.virginia.edu/news/avoidin.... We talked about oral exams, alternative grading, intrinsic motivation, and more.

So the AI minister thinks sexualized deepfakes involving women and young people are a problem... I wonder if there is a specific platform where this is a problem, and if there is anything the government can do, other than amending the Criminal Code, to address this...

Still time to submit your abstracts till 10th of January for #SSN2026! Join us in Lille! All info: ssn2026.sciencesconf.org #surveillance #surveillancestudies

So, like Altman's Worldcoin Orb, but to verify the real cats performing in authentic cat videos...

Maybe if the Leopard gets bogged down rearranging someone else's face, our face won't look so tasty...

As I revise my surveillance studies course for next semester, here are some new additions to the syllabus from 2025. First, the 25th anniversary of Haggerty & Ericson's surveillant assemblage, discussed & debated in this special issue of Surveillance & Society ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/su...

Open Access link: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

I'm getting the personal sense that AI-generated citations to non-existent sources isn't actually as big problem it used to be. Maybe the new trend is AI-generated citations to existing sources, used inappropriately. Just found a recent publication with a fake quote from a real article of mine...

Good research isn't a bunch of text produced through some kind of process, with the appropriate citations added after to support. This is the Grammarly approach to research that I struggle to get undergraduates to avoid. I don't pay undergrads $1mil for their essays. www.castanet.net/news/Busines...

Proud of this new piece 🚨 in @NatMachIntell, with S. Porsdam Mann, @JulianJKoplin & @HaotianYuan0630 - who is still in high school! ➡️ "LLMs in Scholarly Writing Pose a Provenance Problem" - when LLM's 'fill in the gaps' in your thinking with another's uncredited ideas. Preview/link ⬇️.

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Springer Nature retracting papers based on bonkers dataset www.thetransmitter.org/retraction/e... Good. #autism

Digital sovereignty requires ripping Microsoft out of essential systems and ending reliance on its infrastructure, not allowing it to rebrand dependence as sovereignty.

Don’t forget to submit your abstract for #SSN2026 in Lille! All info about the conference and call for abstracts can be found here: ssn2026.sciencesconf.org #surveillance #AI

This is tomorrow! Come join us

I'm thrilled to see this piece in the world. Through it, Dr. Milagros Miceli and her team have put some language to the worker-led methodology which they have developed.

The Canadian Sociological Association conference in Halifax and the Surveillance Studies Network conference in Lille overlap this year. They are both worthwhile and I am feeling a bit torn... SSN is now open for abstracts: surveillance-studies.net/conference/

if you are considering submitting an application for this position, you still have just under 2 weeks to do so any and all suitable candidates, please apply. everyone else, pls share with your networks

I first saw Microsoft's TV ad about "The computer you can talk to" during an NFL game. So I spent a week talking to the Copilot AI in Windows 11. Surely, it must be easy to replicate the specific tasks Microsoft wants millions of people to see... Right? RIGHT?? www.theverge.com/report/82244...

A couple people asked about this Vancouver Sun article whingeing about the word ‘settler’. I wrote a reply on my Substack here: substack.com/@rjjago/note...

Did you know that Thomson Reuters is a major Canadian tech company, and that they do this kind of work for the authoritarians next door? www.404media.co/this-app-let...

A group of scientists has called on EC president Ursula von der Leyen to retract a statement she made suggesting A.I. would soon reach parity with human intelligence. Her statements were based on marketing statements from US Tech firms not empirical evidence or real proof. #ResistAI

too bad carney loves the UAE because it has money for AI 🤑

"Canada intends to continue its partnership with the Coast Guard, called Operation Caribbean. But the country has made clear to the US that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes" <-- Look, they've clearly been told! www.cnn.com/2025/11/11/p...

Signed. There are many problems with a 30-day, industry-heavy 'sprint' to develop AI policies, especially when a key goal is to cut the public service & integrate AI chatbots across government departments.

New art video just dropped! The 7 Trillion Dollar Seance 🔮 This is meant to be performed live, recited in front of the video at conferences, museums, public events. It got a standing ovation at Tech Together in NYC. Your phone works but best on your largest screen. vimeo.com/1116289621 🧵

Canadian government departments are big believers that AI will be the source of reducing expenses. Finance, Justice, CRTC, Fisheries, CRA, ESDC all cite new efficiencies from AI to explain how they will meet the 15% spending reduction target in the budget.

Reading Koopman again

Just put my thoughts together on this: The time to reckon with AI agents in digital learning spaces is now We need ed tech and AI companies collaborating to prevent widespread fraud open.substack.com/pub/annamill...

“I can be the best spy you have ever seen,” Earl promised Privet Bot. The following day, counter-terrorism police arrested him in a car park of B&Q. www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

I still can't bring myself to say "hyperscaler"

"The CRA's chatbot, Charlie, which can answer basic tax-related questions online, provided accurate answers only a third of the time, according to the AG" www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

If the Canadian government is unwilling to stand up to Trump on these killings, it should at least get the Navy as far away as possible from Stephen Miller's murder missiles and further escalation in the region.

The surveillance empire that tracked world leaders, a Vatican enemy, and maybe you www.motherjones.com/politics/202... A stunning investigation by @lighthousereports.com of what I call "despotism as a service"👇

Still relevant: "Digital sovereignty" here usually means being less dependent/vulnerable to the U.S., but there's no positive vision there beyond boosting Canadian industry. If Canada wants to chart its own path, this should include a rethink of how our data is governed and profited from.

Either you eat our brand-labeled slop, or you'll be eating someone else's off-brand slop soon enough. Either way, it's slop for everyone from here on.

AI-generated images shown at the press conference, which the suspect had generated months before the fire, showing the world on fire. The suspect had also previously told ChatGPT he had burned a bible and "felt so liberated". Probable cause by way of AI slop laist.com/news/crimina...

"Progress on genAI could stall, too, leaving consumers with 'good enough' tools that are free to use. In that scenario, AI firms may become less important, the technology a little less powerful — and that might be perfectly OK." theconversation.com/generative-a...

Let's be clear tho: Carney abandoned climate change policy as a cynical means to get elected, not because there are other crises.