Hello. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes AI should have a form of worker’s rights and be able to quit a job it deems “unpleasant.” Many pointed out that his logic — that AI should be shown more compassion as it becomes more human-like — was ridiculous because AI is incapable of subjective experiences and feelings (not to mention the hypocrisy with how the tech industry reacts when actual humans try to get more rights in the workplace).
But Amodei may have stumbled into a good idea. A lot of AI screw-ups happen when it is incapable of something, like making up an answer to a question or cheating at chess when it can’t win. Maybe AI would work better if we let it take an L.
GOVERNMENT
Parts of Canada’s tech industry are looking a little DOGE-y
A group is proposing that Canada would be more prosperous if it shifted a bit to the right.
An organization of tech execs have some ideas about how to make Canada a better place, and at least some of them will seem familiar to anyone watching the dismantling of the government south of the border.
Born out of a WhatsApp group chat, Build Canada is not a lobbying group, and claims to be unaffiliated with any special interest. Rather, it has posted several “memos” outlining policies it thinks would produce a more prosperous Canada, making it more akin to a think tank.
Some of the figures involved include Shopify co-founder Tobi Lütke, Borrowell co-founder and CEO Andrew Graham, Wealthsimple co-founder Michael Katchen, and League founder and CEO Michael Serbinis.
Not all of the ideas are inherently right-wing. One is to divert benefits from high income seniors to create a $10,000 “head start” fund for every child at birth. Another is to invest in high-speed rail, with another challenging telecommunications industry consolidation to lower wireless prices.
But other memos should raise some alarms. One proposal is to cut back on humanitarian immigration — like refugees or people who would be persecuted in their home country — for a more “meritocratic” system that favours those with economically favourable skills. Another pitches using more AI in government services and loosening regulations.
DOGE vibes: The most concerning memo is one pushing government austerity. Authored by Koho founder and CEO Daniel Eberhard, it pushes for reducing the size of the federal public service using hiring freezes, voluntary buyouts, and early retirements to cut spending. It also aims to promote efficiency in the remaining workforce through merit-based performance evaluations and a new independent auditing agency.
Possibly related to this, one Build Canada project is Canada Spends, a website and X account detailing different projects the federal government spends money on. They bear a striking resemblance to DOGE’s (often flawed) accounting of how much money it has saved by slashing programs and laying off workers.
Background: More efficient bureaucracy and transparency in government spending might not seem like they have to result in a huge dork and his brigade of grossly underqualified recent grads slashing vital services and workers, but at least some people involved in Build Canada and Canada Spends seem invested in pushing things in that direction:
Canada Spends isn’t explicitly saying that every government line item it posts should be cut or reduced, but people involved with the effort have praised Elon Musk and DOGE, which certainly colours the narrative they’re presenting.
Beyond a general distaste for taxes, regulation, and things that threaten their definition of “free speech,” execs at Canadian tech giant Shopify have taken a step further, have a track record of supporting conservative causes and politicians, which some saw as an effort to replicate how U.S. tech leaders have tried to pledge fealty to the Trump administration.
What’s next: We will see if tech execs quiet down about this as the public tide continues to turn against austerity-minded policies. Since the U.S. inauguration, perceptions of Pierre Poilievre having Trump-style policies has turned what once seemed like an insurmountable polling lead over the Liberals into a near dead heat.
And execs have personal wealth to lose. Tesla stock prices have tanked thanks to Musk’s DOGE project. The group of billionaires that stood next to Trump at the inauguration have seen their net worths fall by a collective US$209 billion due to the economic uncertainty brought on by DOGE’s cuts and Trump’s trade policies.
IN OTHER NEWS
Source: Google X.
Alphabet spins off laser-based internet company to compete with Starlink. Taara’s tech fires a beam of light between terminals with a system of sensors, optics, and mirrors to transmit data at 20 GB per second over 20 km. This could extend traditional fibre optic networks to remote areas with minimal construction, putting it in competition with the likes of Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper. (Financial Times)
Apple is reportedly working on AirPods that translate conversations. The person wearing the earbuds will hear a live translation of whoever they are speaking to, and be able to translate their own speech being and play it back on their iPhone speaker. Google’s Pixel Buds and Meta’s RayBan smart glasses already have live translation features, though their performance is somewhat inconsistent. (Bloomberg)
Amazon will force Echo users to send voice recordings to the cloud. A feature that lets smart speaker owners block remote storage for recorded commands will end on March 28. Only being able to store recordings remotely raises some privacy concerns, but Amazon claims it is necessary for coming AI-powered Alexa features, which require cloud computing. (The Verge)
Cohere the latest to cut the processing needs of its AI. The enterprise-focused developer claims its Command A model can match the latest OpenAI and DeepSeek model on (somewhat dubious) performance evaluations, while using only two Nvidia A100 or H100 chips. The model is the latest to cast doubt on the idea that more computing power is needed for AI to get more advanced. (The Logic)
Reddit will let users block an advertiser for a year. The ability to click “hide” on ads is rolling out to users over the coming weeks across platforms. The move seems to be an attempt to balance Reddit’s need for revenue since going public last year with ensuring it doesn’t annoy users. (Ars Technica)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Tech companies fight for their right to violate copyright
Open season on data scraping is, apparently, vital for the AI industry to survive.
OpenAI and Google submitted their thoughts on how the White House could give U.S. companies a leg up in the international AI industry, and one of the main points was that their ability to copy other people’s work should be codified in law.
In addition to expressing a general distaste for regulations, the companies’ formal suggestions for the U.S.’s “AI Action Plan” both said that being able to scrape copyrighted material was vital for AI development. OpenAI credited the “ability to learn from copyrighted material” for attracting so much AI investment to the U.S., while Google said fair use and text-and-data mining exceptions are “critical” to development.
Some background: Shortly after he was inaugurated, U.S. president Donald Trump scrapped a Biden-era executive order that aimed to create guardrails for safe and responsible AI development, replacing it with a call for an “action plan” that prioritized making U.S. businesses leaders in the sector.
Lawless: Most countries don’t have specific rules on what data AI can and cannot be trained on, so most parties have been applying their own interpretations of existing copyright laws (which developers say puts their data mining under fair use exceptions). There are also several civil cases that could end up setting precedent, if clearer laws don’t come.
Last month, Canadian AI developer Cohere was sued for copyright infringement by a group of news publishers that includes the Toronto Star, The Atlantic, Condé Nast, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, and Vox Media.
What would happen: If the White House decides data mining is fair game, a lot of people are going to feel at a disadvantage. Artists, news outlets, and creatives will have less recourse if they feel their data has been used to build a machine that makes copies of their work. And AI developers outside of the U.S. might feel like they’re at a huge disadvantage because they are more limited in the data they can use.
There have been suggestions that AI advancement is stagnating because companies are running out of data to train models on, although some research shows pumping more data into AI doesn’t always make it work better.
International copyright enforcement is messy: In most cases — particularly criminal ones — the laws of the country where the infringement took place are what applies, so one would assume a company like OpenAI would be subject to U.S. laws. But courts can consider other jurisdictional factors, which is a reason why a lot of civil suits are filed in the country where the complainant feels the damages took place.
When a group of Canadian news outlets sued OpenAI for copyright infringement in November, they filed their suit in Ontario Superior Court. GEMA, a German music rights organisation, filed its suit against OpenAI in Munich Regional Court.
In Canada: In January, the federal government wrapped consultations on potential changes to the Copyright Act that could clarify the rules around data mining for AI training, and what those rules should be.
In its submission, Cohere mostly asked for more certainty around what kind of data scarping was permissible, but one of the clarifications it requested was that text and data mining does not infringe copyright.
Google claimed that AI training fell under fair dealing exceptions for research and private study, an argument some intellectual property experts have been skeptical about.
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