Thank you, Chair.
Thanks to both of you for appearing before the committee today.
Professor Bengio, you're to be congratulated for the work that you did on the Montreal declaration for responsible development of artificial intelligence, but as this committee has learned and as the public is—I hope—increasingly aware, much of the development of artificial intelligence has been funded by the “data-opolies”, by the Facebooks, by the Googles and by the increasing notoriety, as we learn, of their disregard for written and unwritten ethical guidelines and laws.
Just in passing, and you may not be aware of it, when this committee visited Facebook's headquarters in Washington last year, we were told almost in a passing comment that, when we asked if the company would accept increased regulation in Canada, the sort of investment we made in the AI hub in Montreal might not continue to be forthcoming, which hit me like a clunker. It was basically a threat from a “data-opoly” that Canada would be ostracized from AI investment should we increase regulation, even along the lines of the EU's GDPR or elements of it.
The question is to both of you. Large companies are already using and exploiting artificial intelligence in a variety of very commendable, wonderful ways, but also, in any number of ways that disregard ethical and legal guidelines. Should they be responsible for the misuse or the abuse of AI that occurs on their platforms?