Well, this is it. Our first newsletter and blog. You are receiving it because you have voiced your interest in doing so. If not, our apologies and feel free to hit the unsubscribe button.
The general purpose of these newsletters will be to keep you updated on current developments in transformative AI.
It will also provide subscribers with information that can lead to further action – either through community activism, personal boycotting, political campaigns, or even donations; all contributions help ensure our future and the future of our kids and grandchildren has not been diminished or destroyed because of the pursuits of a handful of techbro billionaires. So let’s use some good old-fashioned Critical Thinking and Ethical Reasoning, and come up with a solid plan for the future of Canada and the rest of the world.
Anyhow, there’s a lot going on these days with advancements – both positive and negative – in the race towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
So here’s what’s happening in real time: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (you know, ChatGPT) is constructing a series of data centres so massive they make you wonder if anyone’s actually thought through the implications. Take Stargate in Abilene, Texas. Altman frames this in predictably utopian language:
“All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI – and in particular AGI – for the benefit of all of humanity. We believe that this new step is critical on the path, and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity.”[1]
Lovely rhetoric. And sure, these systems will generate some genuinely useful technologies. But let’s talk actual scale here: Stargate will cover more space than Central Park – roughly 875 acres – packed with NVIDIA’s top-tier chips and consuming staggering amounts of electricity and water. Today’s data centres already devour about 6% of America’s total electricity. Not exactly what you’d call environmentally responsible. The prevailing logic seems to be: to reach AGI, we just keep scaling up. Bigger equals better. Altman’s already launched Stargate UAE (for which Donald Trump’s “business” received 2 million dollars in bit coin) and now, Altman has plans for facilities across Texas, Wisconsin, and New Mexico.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t sitting this one out either. He’s building his own mega-centres: Prometheus in New Albany and Hyperion in Richland Parish, Louisiana – the latter roughly Manhattan-sized. Do you think these guys are over-accounting for something?
Speaking of which, and then there’s Elon Musk with his Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 facilities in Memphis, each sprawling across about a million square feet. And Dario Amodei is developing Project Rainier with Amazon, slated to become the world’s largest AI compute cluster.
Now, among this cohort of tech bros, Amodei and Hassabis stand out a bit on the ethics spectrum. Amodei and his sister Daniela left OpenAI precisely to build more ethically grounded systems – deliberately naming their company after the Greek word for “human” (anthropos). Hassabis, for his part, advocates for genuine redistribution: “I think we need to make sure that the benefits accrue to as many people as possible – to all of humanity, ideally.”
At least someone’s thinking about who actually benefits from all this.
So, where does that leave us, right now? I believe there are three main areas Canada needs to be focusing on with AI right now:
1. AI and Mental Health. Given how much cell phones have played in shaping psychological health of Millennials and Gen Z’s, AI is having a larger impact in numerous areas. I have just been asked to join a National AI and Mental Health Steering Committee to advise and guide on how emerging AI technologies should be developed, evaluated, and implemented across the country.
2. The future Economic Landscape. Canada better start moving fast on what it plans to do should AI technologies rapidly change the number of employees needed, the types of jobs that will be available, the shifting way in which education must adapt, etc.
3. Canada has always been known as a ‘Peacekeeper’ nation. With that in mind, let’s lead the world in establishing a Global AI Safety and Governance Agency. We can let countries advance in their AI developments, but there needs to be an international governing body that oversees what types of frontier AI countries are developing.
For these last two initiatives, I believe it would be necessary to meet with the Minister of AI, Evan Solomon. These are enormous initiatives. But they are absolutely necessary to ensure that the future of Canadians and citizens worldwide are considered amidst the rapid advancements of such life-changing technologies.
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