Reporting on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s newly announced artificial-intelligence strategy — which includes a $500-million fund to invest in Canadian AI companies and support for data centres adding at least 850 megawatts of compute capacity by 2030 — the article gathers critics who argue the plan ignores the technology’s effect on workers and is light on regulation.
Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis is quoted from an emailed statement saying the strategy imposes AI on Canada without public debate. He called it “a document that is heavy on hype, but light on the right guardrails that we need to protect people and to ensure that the benefits of the technology don’t just flow to a handful of tech giants and investors.” Lewis added that it “proposes a massive boost to business adoption of AI, with no concern for the consequences this will have for workers, especially young workers who are already watching careers vanish before their eyes.”
The piece situates Lewis’s criticism alongside recent public pushback, including a Vancouver rally against data-centre construction, and pairs it with an interview with Vancouver Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed, parliamentary secretary to the minister of artificial intelligence, who defends the strategy’s job-creation goals and its emphasis on sustainably built, closed-loop-cooled data centres.
Source: The Community Press (Local Journalism Initiative, reporting by Isaac Phan Nay for The Tyee). Reproduced for reference under fair dealing (Copyright Act, s. 29).