Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for inviting me to appear before you.
I'll pick up where my colleague left off.
As Professor Jonathan Roberge pointed out, the Canadian government's latest consultations on artificial intelligence and culture have been techno‑centric. In other words, they have focused mainly on resolving the issues caused by the mining of cultural data by techno‑industrial workers in the artificial intelligence sector. This focus on text and data mining, a necessary part of technological development, creates a grey area that obscures the following issues.
First, how have cultural sector workers been affected since the introduction of this technology?
Second, how are emerging uses of artificial intelligence transforming cultural media?
Third, how can cultural sector workers and artists take control of the tool, meaning how can they influence the development of technology so that it serves their interests, at least in part?
It's high time to include cultural sector workers and artists in the consultation processes. They're on the front lines, day after day, inventing new ways to co‑exist with artificial intelligence. These efforts deserve government support.
Bear in mind that technical objects emerge from the convergence of different forces. In addition to industrial forces, we must take into account both users and advanced practitioners who modify these technologies by adapting them through experimental projects. Adapting to artificial intelligence technologies shouldn't be a one‑way street, starting with the techno‑industrial sector of artificial intelligence and ending with cultural sector workers. Instead, it should be a two‑way street, where innovators and users have a say. Cultural sector workers and artists have agency, and the government should support them in their efforts to reclaim their power.
That's why I want to point out the complete absence of the cultural sector in the Canadian sovereign AI compute strategy. This $2 billion project contributes to the exclusion of these stakeholders and positions them as mere passive adopters, ignoring their potential role in innovation and value creation. Yet initiatives to—