Post Tagged with: "ai"

2023 US-Canada Summit by Eurasia Group CC BY 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/2osnFe4

An Illusion of Consensus: What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation

The government quietly released a “what we heard” report this week discussing the response to its 30-day sprint AI consultation from last October. Described as the “largest public consultation in the history of ISED”, the report relies heavily on AI for its analysis as the government notes that it used “Cohere Command A, OpenAI GPT-5 nano, Anthropic Claude Haiku and Google Gemini Flash to read through the submissions and identify common themes.” Given that it received 64,600 responses to 26 questions, it says AI enabled it to shrink a process that would typically take many months into a matter of weeks.

In addition to the public consultation survey, AI Minister Evan Solomon formed a 28 person expert committee that provided the government with 32 different papers and reports. Those documents were similarly subject to AI analysis with the “what we heard” report devoting several pages to the expert analysis and recommendations. Yet unlike the public survey responses, the government has posted all the experts’ reports, which allows the public to see the actual advice alongside the government’s summary of it.

Since the government used AI to summarize the expert reports, I thought I would do the same.

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February 4, 2026 1 comment News
van-8 by Ekō CC BY 4.0 https://flic.kr/p/2rRNqfd

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 255: Grappling with Grok – Heidi Tworek on the Limits of Canadian Law

The Law Bytes podcast is back, starting with an episode on the limits of Canadian law in addressing the concerns associated with Grok AI, the AI chatbot that garnered global attention over the widespread creation and distribution of AI-generated sexualized deep fakes. Weaving together online harms, privacy, AI regulation, and platform regulation into a single issue, there have been service bans in some countries but Canada has thus far struggled to respond.

To help understand what has taken place and Canada’s law and policy options, Professor Heidi Tworek returns to the Law Bytes podcast. Professor Tworek is the Canada Research Chair and Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Her work explores how new communications technologies affect democracy in the past and present and she served on the government’s online harms advisory board.

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January 26, 2026 5 comments Podcasts
DALL·E 2025-11-09 18.47.15 - A wide conceptual illustration representing Canada's AI strategy

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 249: The Debate Over Canada’s AI Strategy – My Consultation Submission and Appearance at the Canadian Heritage Committee

The government’s AI consultation concluded at the end of October with expectations that a strategy will emerge before the end of the year. I participated in the consultation with a brief submission and in an appearance as a witness before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for its study on the effectiveness of technological advances in artificial intelligence on the creative sector. That study touched on many of the same issues as the AI consult with robust discussion on transparency, regulation, and navigating potentially conflicting policy objectives. This week’s Law Bytes podcast offer up a taste of both with the key issues raised in the submission and clips from the committee appearance including my opening statement and exchanges with multiple MPs.

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November 10, 2025 7 comments Podcasts
Mark_Surman_delivering_talk_at_Mozilla_All_Hands_2016_at_Hawaii by Psubhashish CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Surman_delivering_talk_at_Mozilla_All_Hands_2016_at_Hawaii.jpg

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 248: Mark Surman on Why Canada’s AI Strategy Should Prioritize Public AI Models

AI Minister Evan Solomon’s AI public consultation – framed as a 30 day sprint – wrapped up last week with expectations that the government will unveil a new AI strategy by the end of the year. Much of the emphasis to date has focused on how Canada can ensure that it is an AI leader with Solomon previously warning about how the government may have “over-indexed” on AI regulation. Mark Surman, the President of Mozilla, has been a leading global voice on digital policy for many years. He has been increasingly vocal about the benefits of public AI as a counter to the big tech leadership. He joins the Law Bytes podcast for a wide ranging discussion on digital policy, the role of open source, and benefits of a public AI model.

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November 3, 2025 6 comments Podcasts
We Need More Canada in the Training Data: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on AI and the Creative Sector

We Need More Canada in the Training Data: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on AI and the Creative Sector

The government, led by AI Minister Evan Solomon, is currently conducting a short consultation on AI regulation that has attracted criticism for its short time frame. At the same time however, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has been working through a study on AI and the creative sector that may be more limited in scope, but has featured a broader range of perspectives. I had the opportunity to appear before the committee yesterday where I lamented that too often debates on new technology is framed “as a threat, emphasizes cross-industry subsidies, and misses the opportunities new technology presents. We therefore need risk analysis that rejects entrenching the status quo and instead assesses the risks of both the technology and the policy response. I’ll post the full discussion (which ventured into AI transparency, copyright, the news sector, and much more) in a future Law Bytes podcast episode. In the meantime, my opening statement is embedded and posted below.

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October 30, 2025 7 comments News