Advanced artificial intelligence is being rapidly deployed, making knowledgeable people nervous about how it may change almost everything in our world. These are things that should concern us about AI. Some are already happening; some are potential risks.
- AI may destroy trust in authentic information.
- Digital communications may no longer be trustworthy.
- Propaganda is being tested and refined.
- AI may enable mass political manipulation.
- AI may greatly expand crime and fraud.
- AI-assisted cyberattacks may disable vital infrastructure.
- AI may eliminate or degrade large numbers of jobs.
- AI may enable targeted discrimination and pervasive surveillance.
- AI-controlled weapons may act faster than humans can intervene.
- AI may help extremists develop biological or chemical weapons.
- Highly advanced AI may escape meaningful human control.
Many of the listed risks are theoretical. One item is concrete today. AI is leading to fewer jobs. Various shocks are hitting the economy, but none are having more effect than AI. A few years from now, we will look back at 2025 and wonder why more attention was not paid to AI and the handful of individuals who control those systems.
It will be argued that AI makes everyone more productive, and there’s no need to worry today because the future cannot be predicted.
Sadly, we don’t even have the capacity to identify rapid changes in the economy. We may know how many jobs are gained or lost in a given month, but we know little about which jobs have disappeared. The industry categories used today were established decades ago. We don’t reliably track what happens with recent college graduates on a month-to-month basis.
Various private organizations are assembling comprehensive job data, but they’re all telling different stories, and these may be contradictory. We do know that jobs for entry-level workers are being wiped out by AI, but this is happening at other levels as well.
Amazon cut thousands of jobs in the past year and bluntly blamed AI. Other companies announce big layoffs because they are taking advantage of AI and their stock prices go up, and when that happens, executive compensation goes up as well. Rinse and repeat. Most corporate leaders are guided by self-interest, not the national interest.
AI technology is spreading quickly and rapidly developing capabilities. These changes may be occurring more quickly than any seen before. It is impacting our economy, our labour force, and our lives. We know that companies are adopting it rapidly. Yet the public ability to evaluate and regulate AI is close to nonexistent.
Because AI is new, we may not be in the rapid growth stage. A technology J-Curve has three phases: launch, dip, and rise. We have not yet reached the third stage for AI.
Are people who worry about artificial intelligence just 21st-century Luddites? They are probably not completely opposed to this technology but are primarily concerned with corporate control, labour exploitation, and human well-being. Raw economic efficiency is less important.
If the effects of new technology are slowed and well considered, we can cope with disruptions, as we have done before. But we must demand the makers of public policy consider these issues, talk about available ways of managing AI, and create comprehensive plans of action that are broadly accepted by citizens.
Perhaps we need to embrace a guaranteed annual income program. A mostly forgotten Manitoba experiment in the 1970s suggested this was a useful policy. Mincome improved health and education and showed minimal drops in job participation.
Categories: AI - Artificial Intelligence
in-sights.ca 
“If we continue on the current path … we are basically playing Russian roulette with humanity.” — Yoshua Bengio, professor of computer science, University of Montreal.
“What worries him most of all, though, is the possibility that LLMs could develop their own priorities and intentions—and then act on them, using their real-world abilities. An LLM trapped in a chat window can’t do much without human assistance. But a powerful AI agent could potentially duplicate itself, override safeguards, or prevent itself from being shut down. From there, it might do whatever it wanted.” — MIT Technology Review.
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Data Centre Opposition is growing
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ai-data-centre-opposition-explained-9.7225796
As AI data centres rapidly multiply across North America, so too does the opposition toward them.
While there are currently only five hyperscale data centres in Canada, there are 96 facilities either proposed or under construction across the country, according to a recent York University study.
But protests against these projects have been growing across the country, driven by concerns about how much land, electricity and water these massive facilities consume.
Projects in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have been the subject of large protests and other forms of opposition in recent months over concerns about potential environmental and health impacts.
In Manitoba, an online petition against a large AI data centre planned for a rural area south of Winnipeg gathered more than 13,500 signatures.
Premier Wab Kinew said that project won’t go ahead, saying he was concerned about the impact on both the environment and the rural community.
In Hamilton, hundreds of people gathered outside city hall before and during a city meeting where a planning tribunal was weighing a developer’s application that would split a large plot of land into two parts, one of which would be used for “hyperscale and enterprise data centres.”
Meanwhile, a new Angus Reid poll found that 68 per cent of respondents would oppose a large AI data centre being built within a few blocks of where they live, suggesting the opposition may be more widespread.
What opponents are worried about
Research suggests AI requires much more power than other internet services do to operate.
On average, a single query run through the generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT needs nearly 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search, according to 2024 report by the International Energy Agency.
That means AI data centres draw huge amounts of electricity as a result.
According to the York U study, a typical 100 megawatt data centre “would consume approximately 438,000 to 700,800 megawatt-hours annually — equivalent to the electricity consumption of roughly 40,000 to 64,000 Canadian households.”
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Bill Gates has doubts about AI?
https://www.aibase.com/news/22400
Gates Warns: AI Investment May Lead to Severe Failures Data Centers May Increase Power Costs
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, recently said in an interview with CNBC that the current artificial intelligence boom is “very similar” to the internet bubble at the end of the last century, but he emphasized that this wave is “not just hype.” Gates pointed out that although most companies have not yet seen tangible benefits from artificial intelligence, they are still investing heavily in chips and data centers. He expects that some of these investments will eventually end in “costly failures.”
Nevertheless, Gates still called artificial intelligence “the greatest technology I’ve seen in my life,” and he believes its long-term economic potential is “huge and far-reaching.” However, he also warned that the number of newly built data centers around the world is rising sharply, a trend that could significantly increase electricity costs, thereby putting pressure on energy supply and environmental sustainability.
Gates’ views also echo the concerns of other industry leaders. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, AI pioneer Stuart Russell, and Meta’s Chief Scientist Yann LeCun have all recently stated that if the public and capital markets have overly high expectations for artificial intelligence, and technological development fails to keep up, this AI boom might end up repeating the fate of the internet bubble.
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Another confidence building job well done.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/general/oops-data-center-accidentally-wastes-3-million-gallons-of-water-in-drought-stricken-state/ar-AA2bhGpW?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=6a97669e7d8a4f2e9fed023519db3823&cvpid=b7b2e28c54454559c91412758dd98f69&ei=80
Oops! Data center accidentally wastes 3 million gallons of water in drought-stricken state
In related news, officials in El Reno, Okla., say a damaged private water line at a data center there wasted more than 3 million gallons of water before it was discovered late last week. According to KOCO News, the business in question specializes in AI storage and Bitcoin mining.
The leak forced El Reno schools and the county courthouse to temporarily close, and forced thousands of residents to go without water, KFOR reported, after levels in El Reno’s water towers unexpectedly plummeted.
“The last 24 plus hours was a very stressful time,” El Reno Interim City Manager Ken Brown told KOCO.
Some 100% of Oklahoma is in a drought right now, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, with 40% of the western part of the state experiencing either “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the driest of four categories.
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People in Scotland oppose Data Centres too?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/03/hundreds-holyrood-pause-scotland-datacentre-boom-ai
Hundreds gather to urge Scottish government to pause datacentre boom
Opposition mounts as at least 20 projects proposed, including one in Fife billed as second largest in world
Kat Jones may be the closest thing Scotland has to Erin Brockovich in 2026. Standing in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat outside Holyrood, the 52-year-old is revving up the crowd of protesters around her. “Who is here from Lammermuir? Ayrshire? What about Aberdeen?” she calls to the crowd.
On Thursday, hundreds travelled to Edinburgh to call for an immediate moratorium on Scotland’s datacentre boom, which includes one project in Auchtertool, Fife, that has been billed as the second largest in the world.
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Is this a good time to decide to become a doctor?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4709223/healthcare-provided-by-non-human/?itm_source=parsely-api
Just two weeks ago, Ezekiel Emanuel co-published an article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association titled, “Will Autonomous AI Exceed AI-Aided Physicians as the Best Medical Care?” The central claim is that the data now show that AI alone consistently outperforms both human beings alone and humans working with AI in five key tasks:
• Reviewing systems, eliciting complaints, taking family health history, getting past and current medications, etc.
• Choosing the correct tests to order
• Ranking the true diagnosis correctly
• Offering treatments in line with commonly accepted guidelines and practices
• Management of chronic diseases like diabetes (better patient adherence and less distress)
And with AI models improving so fast, they predict that in less than four years, autonomous AI will be ready to deliver health care in “some, maybe many” clinical workflows.
Are we, in fact, ready for where this seems to be headed?
A Pew survey released last week found that 1 in 3 Americans now use AI chatbots for at least one health reason: Everything from diagnosing symptoms to understanding test results. Significantly, 18% use chatbots for matters they are uncomfortable disclosing to a human physician. Nearly all users find chatbots in this context at least somewhat helpful.
This data tracks with, if not our own experience, stories we have likely heard over the last couple of years. One of these anecdotes offered by Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic, one of the most influential figures in the AI revolution) shared some of the details of his sister’s struggle with a pregnancy. She “wasn’t getting the answers or support she needed from her care providers,” but “she found Claude to have a better bedside manner” and even that it was “better at diagnosing the problem.” Amodei wonders if “a human touch” may not be that significant for medicine (and other practices) after all.
AI-delivered “healthcare” can only be plausible as an idea if we operate with a deeply impoverished way of thinking about healthcare. Unfortunately, it is one we have been using for many decades, and now AI looks like it can perform many of these tasks at far lower cost, with virtually infinite time and “patience,” sharper cognitive and technical skills, and better outcomes. There are also serious arguments being made that AI “providers” will be necessary to solve our health care labor shortage.
For a different analysis…
Noam Chomsky:
“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital”
Privatisation does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. For one thing they may purposely run at a loss. They’re not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example if a public steel industry runs at a loss it’s providing cheap steel to other industries.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you to get out of recession.
Private companies can’t do that in a recession. Throw out the work force because that’s the way you make money.
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Put more simply: should a Black Box process determined by a large corporation’s Profit Motive be trusted? How much oversight and regulation should be required?
A large concern when governments decide for themselves that regulating big tech, or big anything, isn’t their priority.
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AI mustn’t be regulated. Says who? Mark Zukerberg.
But he’s just being an impartial observer.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/09/04/congress/trahan-trump-zuckerberg-ai-01065454
A House Democrat trying to lead her party on artificial intelligence policy sent a warning shot Friday to tech CEOs trying to undermine efforts to regulate the fast-growing technology.
In an interview, Rep. Lori Trahan raised alarm bells over a POLITICO report detailing attempts by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally discourage President Donald Trump from moving ahead with plans to establish an independent AI regulator modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.
A House Democrat trying to lead her party on artificial intelligence policy sent a warning shot Friday to tech CEOs trying to undermine efforts to regulate the fast-growing technology.
In an interview, Rep. Lori Trahan raised alarm bells over a POLITICO report detailing attempts by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally discourage President Donald Trump from moving ahead with plans to establish an independent AI regulator modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.
Unlike other Democrats who have retreated to their corners to work on partisan proposals, Trahan has gone out on a limb by crossing the aisle to broker a deal on a bipartisan AI safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) — a package that was originally met with disdain by members of both parties.
She announced this week she would opt out of a run for a place in House Democratic leadership after being widely expected to make a play in the next Congress — in part, she said, to continue working on AI issues.
But Trahan’s comments Friday illustrate the deep distrust among Democrats, herself included, over the GOP approach to AI regulation — from Republicans waffling on whether they support the proliferation of data centers to Trump’s recent call with Zuckerberg.
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Not to worry Canada! In the Liberal Pantheon who is advocating for AI and making promises maybe to protect the public? Evan Solomon AKA Sir Shouts-a-lot. [for details watch Question Period]
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https://www.meansandways.ca/news-articles/pursuing-ai-regulation-alone-a-waste-of-time-says-solomon
Pursuing AI regulation alone a ‘waste of time,’ says Solomon
Unilateral attempts to regulate artificial intelligence would be a “waste of time” and Canada should instead focus on scaling its AI industry, boosting adoption and protecting its digital sovereignty, Federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon said Tuesday.
Speaking Tuesday at a Canada 2020 event in Ottawa, Solomon dismissed attempts to constrain AI at the national level as ineffective in the absence of international alignment. “It’s really hard. There’s lots of leakage. The United States and China have no desire to buy into any constraint or regulation.”
Canada must shift away from “over-indexing on regulation” and instead adopt a more proactive, productivity-focused strategy, he said in his first major keynote address as minister. “We’re moving from our back foot of just warning and over-indexing on regulation, to our front foot to make sure that the Canadian economy, and all Canadians, benefit from adopting this technology productively.”
Solomon outlined a four-pillar strategy to grow and safeguard Canada’s AI ecosystem — focusing on scale, adoption, trust, and sovereignty. He said his policy emphasizes the importance of productivity and job creation and reflects a targeted industrial approach that aims to champion Canadian innovation leaders, such as Cohere and ThinkOn.
‘
Bucking bronco’
“We have a unique competitive advantage, but we need to protect it, and we need to build on it,” Solomon said.
Solomon said the government will push for wider AI adoption, particularly among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), by leveraging tools such as tax credits and flow-through shares — and moving away from diffuse “sprinkler” funding.
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Current opposition to US Ai?
https://www.fastcompany.com/91553925/the-backlash-against-ai-in-4-charts
Only 26% of voters view AI positively and 46% view it negatively, according to a national survey of 1,000 voters in March by NBC. With a net favorability of minus 20, AI was less popular than US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or President Trump. (Since that survey, Trump’s low approval ratings have gotten even worse, so it’s possible AI may now have an edge.) Younger voters, age 18-34, gave AI a lower favorability rating of minus 44.
In a Gallup poll in May, 71% of Americans said they would be opposed to a new AI data center being built in their area, with nearly half of them strongly opposed. (It’s worth noting that in a same survey, only 53% of respondents said that they would oppose a new nuclear power plant in their area.) It’s hard to untangle how much of the data center opposition is tied specifically to the fact that a project powers AI versus more immediate concerns like electric bills; in the Gallup survey, half of opponents cited impacts on resources such as water and energy, and a smaller fraction mentioned their dislike of AI. But it’s also true that many proposed data centers wouldn’t need to exist if not for AI, and voters know that. The fact that AI creates slop and can seem unnecessary isn’t helping.
In Virginia, a hotspot for data centers, support for local projects dropped from 69% in 2023 to 35% this year, and one county recently abandoned plans to build a massive campus with as many as 37 data centers.
A city in California recently became the first to ban new data centers. Others across the country have passed temporary moratoriums. In a town in Missouri, four city council members were voted out after they approved a $6 billion data center. For data center developers that were already struggling to source energy and water and get permits, it’s going to continue to get harder to build.
What about Canada? We trust AI, right?
https://angusreid.org/ai-regulation-canada/
Canadians call for heavy AI regulation, but three-quarters doubt any government can keep up with the technology
The federal government is poised to unveil its national artificial intelligence strategy this week — a sweeping plan built around six pillars, from protecting Canadians to building “sovereign AI” data infrastructure on home soil.
But as Ottawa pushes adoption forward, it faces a public that wants the technology kept on a tight leash and is deeply skeptical that any government can move fast enough to manage it. Already, the physical side of the AI boom is sparking friction: hundreds marched in Vancouver this spring against proposed Telus data centres, citing environmental and neighbourhood concerns.
New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds two-thirds of Canadians (68%) say it is government’s place to heavily regulate AI and tech companies, even if doing so slows development — yet three-quarters (74%) doubt any government is truly equipped to keep pace with the technology. That wariness extends to the ground beneath the boom: 68 per cent would oppose a large AI data centre being built within a few blocks of their home, with rural and urban Canadians equally resistant.
68% say government must heavily regulate AI, even if it slows development
74% doubt any government can keep pace with AI
68% would oppose a large AI data centre near their home
79% support taxing companies that replace workers with AI
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