Just a few days after I posted a version of this column on @Medium, the Chronicle of Philanthropy had this story as its lead story, A.I. Could Prove Disastrous for Democracy: How Can Philanthropy Prepare? (https://www.philanthropy.com/article/a-i-could-prove-disastrous-for-democracy-how-can-philanthropy-prepare).

The author, #GordonWhitman, asserted that we need less A.I. in the world of philanthropy and more human connection. Why? Because donors cant discern the difference between an A.I. generated voice and a real person begging for money.

What he fails to acknowledge is that humanspeopleare a major part of the problem with A.I.

Less than a week ago, on #LinkedIn, I read this post about an #NPR story: @Carmen Drahl, AI was asked to create images of Black African docs treating white kids. Howd it go? (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/06/1201840678/ai-was-asked-to-create-images-of-black-african-docs-treating-white-kids-howd-it-?). My #blackanthropology colleague, Dr. David Simmons (https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-simmons-87743a4/ ), responded to the article with this observation about the real danger behind #AI, and also an appeal:

AI still relies on humanscomplete with their biases and assumptions, both implicit and explicit. Lets work towards creating AI systems that are more inclusive.

The Oxford University researcher that Drahl wrote about, Dr. Arsenii Alenichev (https://www.ethox.ox.ac.uk/team/arsenii-alenichev ), had tried an experiment. The results he and his team of scientists reached over and over again proved that our fear should not be that #artificialintelligence will take over and ruin the human world. After all, A.I. is constrained by its data parameters.

What we do need to fear is how the coding and input of data into A.I. are done by human beings, who come already socialized and filled with cultural biases! Drahl explains,

[Alenichevs]goal was to see if AI would come up with images that flip the stereotype of white saviors or the suffering Black kids [He stated],We wanted to invert your typical global health tropes.

They realized AI did fine at providing on-point images if asked to show either Black African doctors or white suffering children. It was the combination of those two requests that was problematic.

Racial and Gender Inequality in Silicon Valley

What Alenichev learned was thisa computerized intelligence cannot imagine or configure anything beyond its programmers imagination. Artificial intelligence is locked into the social and cultural norms and conditioning of the people who are feeding it the information. And, while sometimes information can be neutral, more often than not, it is also accompanied by interpretations and value judgments.

This, if a (white) programmer cannot conceive of a Black doctor helping white suffering children, then that bias is coded into the A.I. In short, any machine (or A.I.) is only as smart (or empathetic) as the people who initially coded and input the data.

According to UC Santa Barbara sociologist and ethnographer Dr. France Winddance Twine, we probably shouldnt hold our breath for an inclusive A.I. , as Simmons requestedaint gonna happen.

Winddance documents in her latest book, Geek Girls: Inequality and Opportunity in Silicon Valley, how implicit and explicit racial biases and gender inequality abound in Silicon Valley! She concludes the book with this statement:

The technology sector is unjust and not yet a vehicle for economic justice and social mobility for everyone.

Whats an A.I. to do?

So, whats an A.I. to do?

Well, we know that artificial intelligence is not autonomous. It cannot create anythingat least not at this moment in timeoutside of the existing information stored within its database.

A.I. can reconfigure and make up factsand it can also plagiarize and create false data by linking things together and stealing online content from human researcher and writers as Matt Novak pointed out in a May 2023 Forbes article about the new Google search engine: Googles New AI-Powered Search Is A Beautiful Plagiarism Machine.

At this moment in time, A.I. does not have its own autonomous scarecrow brain; it simply mimics and expands upon its existing program.

It is true, if we believe Isaac Asimov in his Robot series, and the Will Smith movie I, Robot, A.I. could become a supercomputer, but it cannot, as Azmera Hammouri-Davis, M.T.S says #breaktheboxes of its human programmer.

Our greatest fear should not be of an autonomous A.I.like Hal the Computer in Space Odysseythough A.I.s are destined to create massive unemployment for laborers who are unskilled in use of technology. As the Chronicle of Philanthropy reminds us, they can be made to sound human.

Nonetheless, our greatest fear MUST be of A.I.s should be that they are being supercoded with #whitesupremacy ideology and #genderinequality data.

And, dont act surprised! This is not new stuff. Since 2018, groups like the Critical Code Studies Working Group at the University of Southern Califorinia, now called The Humanities and Critical Code Lab (HaCCS), led by Mark Merino, have been looking at issues of inequality in coding for several years.

Indeed, I discovered this fact some time agobefore Google began reading critiques of its coding practices. What I found was that if you typed #blackbeauty into the google search engine, all that appeared were images of horses, like in the movie Black Beauty.

Conversely, if you typed in #beauty, only images of #whitewomen appeared. Since then, Google has become more #WOKE and updated some images in the search parameters connected to these words. But whiteness still prevails.

These are just a few of the known biases coded into #A.I. historicallyand the recent experiments by Dr. Alenichev proves that racial stereotypes are still prevalent, such that in the coded minds of A.I. (and its programmers), all the suffering children are Black and nonwhite and ALL the medical doctor saviors are white.

In the case of Black doctors treating white suffering children, such biases and assumptions against this as a possibility are rooted in #whitesupremacy ideology and beliefs;

Disbelief in the professionalism of Black people are part of the tacit anti-Blackness knowledge around which most white people are socialized in America, and Europeans globally.

These human beliefs and biases will not change/cannot change until medical schools are more diverse, and Silicon Valley becomes equal, ungendered, diverse, equitable, and inclusive!

It is not the A.I. that needs a #DEI reboot, but the human beings that code them sure do!

But. dont hold your breath for immediate change.

The current climate of anti-CRT, anti-Blackness, and attempts to whitewash America history and negate the history of hundreds of years of human enslavement, suffering, and ongoing Black and Indigenous generational trauma, disparities, and inequality (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/24/florida-desantis-black-history-education-00107859) suggests little hope for change towards a more socially and racially intelligent A.I., based on the current state of biases in the tech industry in Silicon Valley and the mindset of its human coding professionals.

(c) 2023 Irma McClaurin

An earlier version published on Medium, Oct 20, 2023 (https://irmamcclaurin.medium.com/ai-is-not-the-problem-we-need-more-diverse-and-inclusive-humans-in-the-tech-sector-7cbec2ad2b77)

Dr. Irma McClaurin (https://linktr.ee/dr.irma/@mcclaurintweets) is a digital columnist on Medium, Culture and Education Editor forInsight News, and Ms. Magazine author. She is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.An activist Black Feminist anthropologist and award-winning author, recognized in 2015 by the Black Press of America as Best in the Nation Columnist. She is a past president of Shaw University and recently was featured in the PBS American Experience documentary on Zora Neale Hurston as an anthropologist. A collection of herInsight Newscolumns,Justspeak: Reflections on Race, Culture & Politics in America,is forthcoming. She is also working on a book manuscript on Zora Neale Hurston and anthropology as well as a collection of short vignettes entitled Confessions of a Barstool DIVAH.

The rest is here:
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is not the Problem: We Need More Diverse and Inclusive Humans in the Tech Sector - Insight News

MOSCOW (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday announced a plan to endorse a national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence, emphasizing that its essential to prevent a Western monopoly.

Speaking at an AI conference in Moscow, Putin noted that its imperative to use Russian solutions in the field of creating reliable and transparent artificial intelligence systems that are also safe for humans.

Monopolistic dominance of such foreign technology in Russia is unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible, Putin said.

He noted that many modern systems, trained on Western data are intended for the Western market and reflect that part of Western ethics, norms of behavior, public policy to which we object.

During his more than two decades in power, Putin has overseen a multi-pronged crackdown on the opposition and civil society groups, and promoted traditional values to counter purported Western influence policies that have become even more oppressive after he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Putin warned that algorithms developed by Western platforms could lead to a digital cancellation of Russia and its culture.

An artificial intelligence created in line with Western standards and patterns could be xenophobic, Putin said.

Western search engines and generative models often work in a very selective, biased manner, do not take into account, and sometimes simply ignore and cancel Russian culture, he said. Simply put, the machine is given some kind of creative task, and it solves it using only English-language data, which is convenient and beneficial to the system developers. And so an algorithm, for example, can indicate to a machine that Russia, our culture, science, music, literature simply do not exist.

He pledged to pour additional resources into the development of supercomputers and other technologies to help intensify national AI research.

We are talking about expanding fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models, Putin said.

In the era of technological revolution, it is the cultural and spiritual heritage that is the key factor in preserving national identity, and therefore the diversity of our world, and the stability of international relations, Putin said. Our traditional values, the richness and beauty of the Russian languages and languages of other peoples of Russia must form the basis of our developments, helping create reliable, transparent and secure AI systems.

Putin emphasized that trying to ban AI development would be impossible, but noted the importance of ensuring necessary safeguards.

I am convinced that the future does not lie in bans on the development of technology, it is simply impossible, he said. If we ban something, it will develop elsewhere, and we will only fall behind, thats all.

Putin added that the global community will be able to work out the security guidelines for AI once it fully realizes the risks.

When they feel the threat of its uncontrolled spread, uncontrolled activities in this sphere, a desire to reach agreement will come immediately, he said.

Read more here:
Putin to boost AI work in Russia to fight a Western monopoly he says is 'unacceptable and dangerous' - The Associated Press

2015 was a breakthrough year for AI deep learning by achieving the lowest error rate, yet.

Two of the most fascinating technologies under development at the moment are artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse. Metaverse is still in its early stages, even though AI is now being used in many different businesses. But, Metaverse has recently taken a backseat to AI in the most recent flurry of AI activity at big tech and others. Despite renaming Facebook to Meta almost 2 years ago, in March 2023, Meta announced shifting R&D focus from Metaverse to artificial intelligence (AI). This has raised questions about readiness of AI versus Metaverse for the consumer market. Here, I will mention some of the challenges in developing the Metaverse and try to explain why AI is easier to develop.

Since software is the primary tool for developing, implementing and testing of AI models, it also has become the focus of AI development. AI can be used in software development to expedite testing, generate code more quickly and efficiently, and automate manual tasks. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are progressively extending into new domains and discovering new uses in well-established businesses. The concepts for AI have been around for decades. However, the accessibility of AI development has increased due to the availability of software tools, frameworks, and datasets. Today, pre-built models are available for developers to utilize and incorporate seamlessly into their apps. On the other hand, creating the Metaverse is a very complicated and a recent idea. For developers, creating a virtual world with millions of users interacting simultaneously presents a big challenge.

One of the biggest challenges in developing the Metaverse is creating a seamless user experience. A accurate replica of the real environment must be created by developers in order to produce this seamless experience. Large R&D budgets and cutting-edge technologies, such augmented and virtual reality (AR) headsets, along with every component technologies are needed for this.

More here:
Why Artificial Intelligence won over Metaverse | by Technology ... - Medium

Blink and youll get left behind.

The AI revolution is here and its changing the world faster than anybody could have predicted.

Whether thats for better or worse depends on whom you ask. Whats undeniable is this the only limitation on how AI will transform the world is us.

Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called grandfather of AI, issued warnings this year, sounding the alarm about the existential threat of AI.

In May 2023, he appeared in an article on the front page of The New York Times, announcing he had quit his job at Google to speak freely about the harm he believes AI will cause humanity.

The way that we propose and strategize technologies rarely, if ever, turn out, said Isabel Pedersen, author and professor at Ontario Tech University focusing on the social implications of emergent technologies.

If Hinton is having a come-to-Jesus moment, he might be too late. Over 100 Million people use ChatGPT, a form of AI using technology he invented. Thats on top of the way AI is already interwoven into practically everything we do online.

And while Toronto-based Hinton is one of the Canadian minds leading this industry one which is growing exponentially the circle of AI innovators remains small.

So small, in fact, that while filming for this story in Torontos Eaton Centre, our Global News team happened upon Hamayal Choudhry, founder and CEO of smartARM, the worlds first bionic arm for which AI uses cameras to dictate movement.

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Unknowingly, we asked him for an interview about the latest release and quickly learned, this was no ordinary shopper.

Choudhry was in the store testing the glasses out for himself, curious to see if AI could be as big a disruptor in the world of glasses as he intends to make it in the world of prosthetics.

The same way those glasses have tiny cameras in the frames, thats what were doing for our prosthetic arms, Choudhry said, in an informal interview in the mall concourse.

smartARM is just one of many examples of how AI is on the brink of revolutionizing virtually every facet of human existence. Canada is on the leading edge, utilizing what AI can do from healthcare and education to airlines and entertainment.

There are inherent risks with AI and a lack of regulation and oversight in Canada, but overall, AI is improving our daily lives in ways that may often remain undetectable.

Canadas AI pioneering dates back to the 1970s, when researchers formed the worlds first national AI association.

The Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC) formerly known as the Canadian Society for the Computational Studies of Intelligence, held its first official meeting in 1973.

Its own mission statement says the CAIAC aims to foster excellence and leadership in research, development and education in Canadas artificial intelligence community by facilitating the exchange of knowledge through various media and venues.

It held its first annual conference in 1976, three years before the American Association for Artificial Intelligence was founded.

Conferences helped with collaboration and community-building, especially in those early days when remote work did not exist and even phone calls were expensive. When you look at the earlier proceedings, you will see a pool of talent that was leading the world in AI, said Denilson Barbosa, current CAIAC president.

The society has had different publications over the years, including a magazine and newsletters, first published in 1974.

Its archive is a treasure trove of AI history. Its magazine debut in 1984 talks about the potential and the influence of AI: It is predictable that, awakening to their new place in the sun, AIers be distracted by sycophants, charlatans, and barmecides. Does the AIer grow frustrated with misconceptions about AI? You bet we do.

Barbosa is a professor of computing science at the University of Alberta. Speaking by phone from Edmonton, Barbosa acknowledged that while Canada is slow to fully integrate AI, conservative in investing and implementing new technologies, hes looking forward to the possibilities of AI in learning in school or for personal growth, including AI in classrooms.

The way we teach is fairly passive. Instructors have a huge influence on the success of students and control the pace of the process. It would be best to turn things around and let the students drive the process they would work on their own, and when they got stuck, they would get help from an always-available AI, Barbosa said.

Human instructors would be there to oversee the process and provide extra help to those who need it the most.

When most people think of AI, robots from movies who can think for themselves come to mind. Thats known as deep learning AI, found in the software of autonomous cars, facial recognition, mass surveillance and yes, some robots. Its the AI that has the potential to think for itself and that scares a lot of people.

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Then theres the field where Canada is considered a leader: the broader technology of machine learning AI, which most people dont realize we already use every day. It curates social media feeds, translates languages, detects fraudulent bank transactions, makes song and movie recommendations, and more. Its driven by human input and our habits.

Under the umbrella of machine learning, is Generative AI. It generates new content that mimics the data it was trained on.

Think of a program that has been trained with vast amounts of information, information that exists all over the Internet. And it develops an understanding and a representation of what this information is all about, Deloitte Canadas Jas Jaaj told Global News The New Reality.

Generative AI allows you to tune the information in a way where now you can actually consume the information the way you want to based on your values, based on your preferences. And then you can ask all sorts of questions to be able to get things like recommendations, things like suggestions of what you may want to have for a meal.

Most Canadians cant tell whats human or AI. A study released in October by the Canadian Journalism Foundation found that half of us are not confident in distinguishing the difference between social media content generated by AI compared with content created by humans.

This unknown is leading to a lot of fear and misinformation about what AI is and isnt doing. But whether were ready, its poised to change nearly everything we do and Canada is already playing a leading role.

In 2017, the federal government put $125 million of funding into AI, the first country to have a national AI strategy. The funding helped to create three world-renowned institutes to guide development in AI research in Montreal, Edmonton, and Toronto, and put Canada among the top five nations in the field.

For me, the biggest risk is not adopting AI and realizing its maximum potential, said Deval Pandya, vice-president of AI engineering at Torontos Vector Institute, one of the institutes founded in 2017.

AI is a transformative technology that is going to make [the] world a much better place and help us solve some of the most pressing challenges as a society that we face right now.

Hes personally bet on Canadas future. Pandya, originally from India, joined Vector Institute nearly three years ago, after working in the U.S.

I think its very bright. And if it wasnt bright, I wouldnt move to Canada, Pandya said.

Vector Institute is an independent non-profit dedicated to AI research. It has partnerships with 20 university programs in Ontario with training focused on AI, providing startups with a steady stream of new workers.

Last year, we graduated more than a thousand Vector-recognized master students. And what is very impressive is that 90 per cent of the students stay in Canada, in Ontario, after they graduate, Pandya said.

You dont have to look far from the Vector Institute to see AIs evolution.

Jas Jaaj, a managing partner at Deloitte in Toronto who focuses on AI and data, believes AI will be to the 21st century what the steam engine was to the 18th century, what electricity was to the 19th century, and what personal computers were to the 20th century.

You know what really happened in all of these major developments? Every major industry changed, societies changed, Jaaj said.

Professional services firms like Deloitte help companies find the next big thing. And these days, it doesnt get bigger than AI.

Global News got an exclusive look at one of the ways AI will change health care. Its an AI nurse, assigned to newly discharged patients to help track their recovery care plan and progress.

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It was created in partnership between Deloitte and The Ottawa Hospital and received positive feedback when it was rolled out in the testing phase.

Each AI nurse is unique to the patient. It has the information it requires to converse with a patient about their care and its skin tone, even the language and dialect it speaks, can be altered to put a patient at ease.

During the demo for Global News, the AI nurse asked: Regarding your post-discharge medications, Tenzin and Lasix, do you have any questions or concerns about them, how to take them or any potential side effects?

The responses given by the patient trigger another series of questions. It will ask if youve weighed yourself, how youre feeling, and more, as a way to ensure post-op instructions are being followed. And if its interacting with a stubborn patient, it will push back.

They could be a bit insistent in terms of saying, Hey, you know what? You havent done what you were supposed to do, so get on with it, Jaaj said.

Most importantly, the AI nurse is smart enough to flag problems for a human nurse or doctor to intercede.

The goal of the AI nurse isnt to replace human nurses, its to take tasks off their already full plates and allow them to perform higher-value work with more time. It can also lower readmission rates. Jaaj predicts 100 per cent of Canadian hospitals will begin to use AI in some way within the next few years.

Regardless of the goal, it doesnt stop one of the biggest concerns about progress in integrating AI into the Canadian workforce: job losses.

This is a hot topic in terms of the anxiety that some people have, Jaaj said. The way to think about it is not in a way by which it will replace workers. Rather, it will reshape the workforce as we move forward.

While progress will have its casualties, Canada is very much in a position of relying on human input to use AI. AI can take on time-consuming tasks, freeing us up to solve more complicated problems.

Thats what Air Canada is doing, on a mission to overhaul and streamline its entire company by taking advantage of the power and efficiency AI creates. Its biggest challenge is tackling the thing we all hate most: delays.

In terms of the complexity of getting our passengers safely to where they want to be on time, a lot of things have to go right, said Bruce Stamm, Air Canadas managing director of enterprise data and artificial intelligence.

There are literally 60 things which need to go right for an aircraft to land on time. Only 30 of those do we actually control as an airline.

When it works, the chaos of air travel seems like a synchronized symphony in the sky. Canadas largest air carrier is timing the takeoffs and landings of more than 1,100 daily flights in such a way that 140,000 passengers get to where they want to be unhindered by delays or lost bags.

But the truth is, frustrations are all too common. Even a 10-minute delay of a flight at the beginning of the day can cause a ripple effect.

Nearly 28 per cent of Air Canada flights, or more than 8,700, landed late in October 2023, placing the company ninth out of 10 airlines on the continent in on-time performance, according to aviation data company Cirium.

In late October, Stamms team started using AI to optimize its scheduling and predict delays. The program uses historical data and looks at scheduling three to five years in advance. Instead of the old way of doing things, using theoretical predictions about flight times, cleaning, maintenance, and more, Air Canada is able to devise a more accurate schedule.

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Global News got a first look at the companys Montreal headquarters.

The software doesnt seem like much coloured boxes on a screen but it churns through massive amounts of data, faster and more efficiently than a person could.

AI and data are going to be part of our DNA just to do a lot more effective decision-making, Stamm said.

Next year, Air Canada plans to use AI to modernize its maintenance schedule for its fleet of about 200 planes. It will take into consideration where planes and mechanics are located, ordering time for parts, and more. The best part? What currently takes people weeks to do will soon be done in about 15 minutes, allowing for work a computer cant do to become the priority.

Air Canada is embracing this, leveraging this to the better of our employees experience and ultimately our passengers experience, Stamm said. Its awesome. And its also fun.

While Canadas largest corporations are harnessing new technology, small startups are also launching very quickly. In the last year, hundreds of Canadian AI startups have hit the market.

A couple of weeks after Global News met Choudhry, he and smartARM co-founder Evan Neff, invited the Global News crew to their Toronto office, a small area in a coworking building east of downtown, which also holds their first prototypes.

Choudhry started smartARM about four years ago, shortly after beating out 50,000 other inventors at a competition sponsored by Microsoft in 2018. He had learned that prosthetics were either cheap but clunky, or functional but expensive.

Neff tells Global News, smartARMs goal is to enhance autonomy and accessibility in the prosthetic space.

Choudhry and Neff arent specifying their price point yet, Neff said current market prices range from about $30,000 to $200,000 making high-quality prosthetics inaccessible to roughly 95 per cent of the upper-limb different community.

We aim to change this, Neff said.

For those with insurance or funding, smartARM will remain affordable, minimizing out-of-pocket expenses. For others, were pricing smartARM comparably to a smartphone or laptop, not a car.

smartARM set out to design something affordable and remarkable.

It mimics human tendencies, like hand-eye coordination, holding items, carrying heavy objects and lifting delicate ones. Using AI, Choudry saidthe prosthesis will inherently know how to handle something just like the way you would look at an object and grab it. You wont necessarily think about how you wrap your fingers around it.

smartARM isnt for sale yet, with regulatory certifications and approvals pending. In the meantime, Choudhry and Neff are testing it on people with a limb difference, including former NFL player Shaquem Griffin.

Griffin was born with a rare condition forcing the amputation of his left hand when he was four years old. He made NFL history when he was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in 2018 and went on to play for the Miami Dolphins before retiring in 2022 after four seasons in the league.

Choudhry sent a private message to Griffin on Instagram late last year and it wasnt long before Choudhry and Neff travelled to meet Griffin and his mother.

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The first time he put on a smartARM and interacted with it, they were sitting down for dinner at a restaurant.

Choudhry recalls Griffin repeatedly picking up and putting down a glass of water, taking a drink, and passing it to different people at the table. Choudhry and Neff witnessed Griffin use his left hand for the first time as an adult.

Shaquem has proven that having a limb difference doesnt mean that you are any less capable of greatness, Neff said.

We want to stress that smartARM isnt about necessity; its simply about empowering our users with more choices and independence. Watching Shaquem explore new possibilities with smartARM was a testament to our mission.

smartARM also made its New York Fashion Week debut in 2023, showcased by Griffin at the Runway of Dreams, highlighting inclusivity through fashion and beauty.

Just looking at their expressions and looking at how they interact with it so intuitively and naturally is inexplicably rewarding for us to see, Choudhry said of the users testing smartARM. You know, it makes coming in here and working every day not even really seem like work.

Pedersen has been studying wearable technology for over 20 years. Even she is amazed at how fast AI has become embedded in our daily lives.

People went from never experiencing AI themselves to being able to use it on their phones, to use it on their laptops, use it at work, use it at home, she said.

Weve gone through this rapid process in a matter of weeks that in some ways other technologies took 100 years.

In addition to her role as a professor at Ontario Tech University, Pedersen is the founding director of the Digital Life Institute. Its an international research network studying the social implications of emergent digital technologies.

Pedersen said inventors are still developing and designing a future that hasnt happened yet.

We have to be careful of techno-solution-ism. For me to say that youre going to have a technology that is going to solve these very difficult problems it wont, Pedersen said.

I do believe that we have to continue to move forward and try to design ethical outcomes at the earliest stages so that we can presuppose some of these harms that are ongoing that we might face.

As with everything related to new technology, there are persistent concerns that AI is moving much faster than the guardrails being built for it.

The federal government has a framework for proposed legislation, but The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act wont come into force before 2025. Federal Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, Franois-Philippe Champagne, told Global News the government wants to get it done right.

Theres an acknowledgment that we need to deal with the concerns and the risks so that we can realize the opportunities. And in order to do that, we need framework, we need guardrails, so we build trust with people, Champagne said.

But trust can be tricky. Until the act becomes law, the government released a voluntary code of conduct in late September for generative AI developers. In the absence of regulation, it is supposed to guide organizations to come up with an environment to self-regulate.

It is incumbent on organizations and businesses themselves to not only wait for things like regulations and these types of directives coming in, but also go down the path of really understanding how they can self-regulate in the interim by educating themselves and learning about how this technology will really make a difference, Jaaj said.

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Artificial Intelligence: Canadas future of everything - Global News

Artificial Intelligence has been asked to create a host of things since it's creation.

Another thing AI's created it what it believes your average Joe might look like depending on which US state they live in.

And it's safe to say the results are questionable.

We should really all know by now that there's no such thing as the 'average person', but there are stereotypes, fashion trends and local traditions, and its these factors that seem to have inspired AI when it came to creating images of the 'average' human from a specific US state.

In a post on the Reddit thread r/midjourney, a Redditor shared a series of AI-generated images from a variety of states, along with the caption: "The most stereotypical person in [state name]."

The caption presumably represented the prompt they'd given to the AI program before letting it do its thing, with the chosen states including Texas, California, Colorado, Florida, Oregon and Maine.

And the results of the prompt are interesting, to say the least. Where to begin?

Kicking things off with Texas, we have a man dressed in some 'cowboy'-style attire, including a large cowboy hat, a brown shirt tucked into blue jeans and a wide belt buckle.

It's all flower-power in California, where the AI human has long hair blowing in the breeze, big sunglasses and a floral shirt.

While in Colorado it's a different kind of plant getting all the attention, with a woman perched on what looks to be a mountaintop packed with marijuana plants.

She's wearing a green hoodie and headband, with what looks to be a smoking joint in her hand.

I'm not sure how many people hike up weed mountains to get a hit in Colorado, but okay.

Next let's head to Florida, where a man with a long white beard stands on a road with long blue shorts, a baggy pink shirt and a sunhat, before moving to Oregon, where we're greeted by a woman with short greyish-blue hair.

And things take a dramatic turn as we head to Maine; a city known for its lobster.

To represent this, our AI man stands with a hat featuring an actual lobster on his head.

Again, I'm not sure how 'average' that is, but I've never been to Maine myself.

The AI-generated images have sparked mixed responses after being shared online, with one outraged Reddit user claiming the original poster 'clearly used unflattering prompts for the red states'.

Another unimpressed viewer commented: "Hi. Maine here. Can you not put dead lobsters all over everything? K thx."

The creations have left many people intrigued, though, with a lot of comments calling for more AI-generated images from even more states.

Read more:
Artificial Intelligence images of 'average' person from each US state ... - UNILAD