In recent years, the Canadian and Quebec media have widely promoted researchers in artificial intelligence (AI) as well as the large companies that hire them, Facebook, Google and other GAFAM. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, whose funds come from the federal government, even subsidizes research chairs that associate universities and these companies, as if these multinationals did not have the means to pay for researchers! Finally, the media also made a big splash around the “Montreal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence”.
However, in the current controversy between the Canadian government and Meta, it can hardly be argued that important ethical and social justice issues related to AI algorithms are not at stake. by the silence of these researchers whose knowledge and “products” are nevertheless at the very foundation of the companies that shamelessly plunder the information produced and transmitted at great expense by the journalists and media that employ them. These AI algorithms serve more to optimize the profits of the companies for which these researchers work – or consult – than to support the public good and democratic life.
However, the famous “Declaration of Montreal” supposed to embody exemplary behavior for everything related to the field of algorithms – supposedly “intelligent” – stipulates that AI should: “not harm the maintenance of human relations”, “allow ‘increase well-being’, ‘not contribute to increasing stress, anxiety and the feeling of harassment linked to the digital environment’, ‘avoid creating dependencies through attention-grabbing techniques’, and many more.
Even though the governments of Quebec and Canada, as well as municipalities, have suspended their advertising on certain platforms in solidarity with the media and denounced the shameless blackmail of these companies which today use their algorithms to censor Canadian information in reaction to a democratically voted law, it would be interesting to hear the universities – which boast of being associated with these companies – and especially the researchers in AI publicly denounce the antisocial behavior of the GAFAM, which are the first users of their “innovations”.
These so-called “progressive” circles are usually quick to denounce any perceived social “inequity”. This is a blatant case of abuse. And any silence on the part of those who are best placed to understand how their algorithms are currently being used as a tool of reprisal against the State, which nevertheless subsidizes their research, can only be interpreted as a form of complicity or cowardice. Instead of the headlong rush of calls for moratoriums in the face of imaginary “civilizational” dangers, here is an opportunity to denounce a very real use of algorithms (not so intelligent as we believe) by companies whose sole purpose is to maximize their profits without worrying about the social and economic effects of their decisions.