Evidence of meeting #109 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was risk.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
It would be sort of an inclusive set of use cases that would be ever-expanding.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Would that not be through regulation, potentially? That would be the natural way to update that.
6:50 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Yes, you could. I think our concern is that the minister's proposed amendments identify use cases or specific scenarios that we don't believe are high impact. That's where we've identified concerns about things like content moderation and prioritization, and also the fact that there is no threshold for harm in the bill currently.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Do all of you agree that some threshold for harm needs to be added to the bill?
Again, I'll start with you Ms. Curran, because you were responding directly to my previous question. Then I can really quickly survey the panel before my time is up.
6:55 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Yes, we agree with that. There should be a threshold for harm.
6:55 p.m.
Director, Global Artificial Intelligence and Canada Public Policy, Amazon Web Services, Inc.
This is the incredibly challenging part of trying to horizontally regulate—
6:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
6:55 p.m.
Director, Global Artificial Intelligence and Canada Public Policy, Amazon Web Services, Inc.
—one technology that has an incredible breadth of sectoral applications. The depth and breadth of AI is immense. Trying to come up with something that factors in all of these use cases is so difficult. The reason it's so difficult is that how you manage harm or manage risk will be so specific to the data you're working with, the population you're engaging with and who will be interacting with these systems that trying to do this as a horizontal piece of legislation is a bit of a fool's errand.
Really, looking at different sectors and those who have the expertise in their sector will be a lot more specific and efficient from a regulatory approach. These are the regulators that have expertise in these complex sectors and that already manage risk.
I think there will be a need for a backstop piece of legislation. Other countries have identified this. The U.K. has identified this as an approach that they are looking at taking, but they are waiting to legislate. They're doing the work by sector first and seeing where the gaps that need to be filled.
I think what you're being asked to do as a committee and with this piece of legislation is extremely difficult. It will be very difficult to make sure that we get at the risks we want to target.
6:55 p.m.
Liberal
6:55 p.m.
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Inc.
Additional work needs to be done on the definitions, perhaps taking a principles-based approach. One thing that really surprised me when I was talking to an insurance underwriter on their use of AI was that they don't use AI for all their claims adjustments. They said 10% of their claims are silly and simple, so they're going to have AI do the silly, simple ones. They'll get that work out of the way and then keep people doing what people are uniquely qualified to do, which is creativity, ingenuity and critical thinking. That was taken off the table. If I look at harms and categories of uses, do they fall into high-impact use because you're using them for claims adjudication, whether it's the silly, simple ones or not?
There is a need to go back and look at those definitions and look at how these tools are actually implemented in the real world. I don't think that's been done sufficiently across the broad communities, as was said.
6:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Ms. Patell, please respond very quickly, because I know the chair is going to cut me off for sure, although he's generous with everybody.
6:55 p.m.
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
No problem.
To your question about whether there should be a threshold or some sort of test for harm, I think we would agree that there should be. This is maybe just an issue of clarification, because elsewhere in the bill there are references to significant or material harm. Maybe what we really need to do is have some consistency in the language.
The final thing I'll say here is that I think these recommendations all speak to the ability to make some adjustments in this bill and land it in a really workable place. If you have use cases that are about the material harms you're concerned about, whether they're health impacts or economic outcomes, insert some factors for what a high-impact system is to give clarity there, establish a test for harm or a threshold for harm and then enable and empower sectoral regulators to do what they do best. They can draw upon their extensive expertise to apply that approach for their areas of regulation. I think that can provide a path to having the type of flexible policy framework you're looking to build.
6:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you very much.
Mr. Genereux, you have the floor for five minutes.
6:55 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank all the witnesses for being here with us.
Last Monday, when he appeared before this committee via videoconference, Mr. Bengio told us we had to move Bill C‑27 forward quickly, because in a decade or even within two years, robots as smart as humans could make decisions.
In today’s La Presse, an article on digital life shows that in 2019, during the pandemic, your four respective companies and Apple created nearly 1 million jobs. Since then, especially over the last two years, over 125,000 of them were cut, and it’s not over.
Are these employees, who created tools through artificial intelligence, now paying for it by having their jobs eliminated? Is this the start of a significant reduction in the number of employees?
I own an SME. As we speak, in the field of communications, tools like ChatGPT can create websites in five minutes. Obviously, it doesn’t take me five minutes to do it. One must adapt to today’s reality.
In the future, will artificial intelligence help us to create more jobs or fewer jobs in the field of information technology?
In fact, Ms. Craig, you talked about research and development. I think Ms. Curran did too.
Could Bill C‑27 undermine research and development in Canada if it sets out rules for artificial intelligence that are too strict?
My questions are for everyone. You may answer one after the other if you like.
7 p.m.
Director, Global Artificial Intelligence and Canada Public Policy, Amazon Web Services, Inc.
I keep having to go first.
I can speak a bit about the impact on jobs. We're pretty conscious of the fact that new technology changes the employment landscape. Not very many of us work in facilities that have secretaries and receptionists anymore. There are a lot of functions in those roles that technology, for example, has taken away the need for. We'll definitely experience a transition in our economy, but I think some of it could be extremely beneficial.
As a country, when we think about AI adoption and where we want to encourage strong AI adoption, we should look at sectors where we already have labour shortages. Health care is a great example, and the construction industry is another example. Targeted applications of AI can help alleviate labour shortages, and some of the administrative burdens that doctors and nurses face can be alleviated through different applications of AI to ensure that they're able to focus more on patient care.
We expect to see change. I think in some cases, AI actually creates new economic opportunity in different types of employment, but change is a certainty.
7 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Go ahead, Madam Curran.
7 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
I agree with that. It will change the labour market. I'm actually really optimistic about this. Some 200 years ago, 72% of North American workers were farmers, and now there are fewer than 2%. Sixty per cent of the jobs that existed in North America in 2018 didn't exist in 1940, so I think we're going to create a whole new set of jobs. However, it is going to be incumbent upon government and policy-makers to work with companies on making sure we're training the labour force of the future and that Canadians are getting the skills they need to enter what's going to be a whole new workforce with a whole new set of jobs. I agree with Nicole as well that in an era of labour shortages, AI is going to be the best tool we have to solve some of those issues.
On the issue of research and development, our global AI research is based in Montreal. Dr. Joelle Pineau, who I hope can appear before this committee at some point, can talk to about the amazing work she is doing out of Quebec to catalyze AI research globally.
I think the wrong regulatory framework and overreach or over-regulation by the government are going to drive activity out of the country. I would hate to see us lose it, because we are world leaders when it comes to AI research.
7 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Ms. Craig, what is your answer?
7 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Let's hear just on innovation and research.
7 p.m.
Senior Director of Public Policy, Office of Responsible AI, Microsoft
I think because of the way the bill very broadly affects even lower-risk technology, it could impact research and innovation. It could dampen innovation and ultimately result in a reluctance among Canadian businesses, including small and medium-size businesses, to adopt AI and to feel confident that they can meet regulatory requirements in using AI for innovation. It could also ultimately impact the competitiveness of those businesses and of Canada.