On March 29, the Liberal Party of Quebec submitted a request for an initiative order for the National Assembly to discuss – in a transparent and cross-partisan manner – the place that artificial intelligence (AI) will occupy in our lives in the next years.
Our great Quebec AI specialist, Yoshua Bengio, as well as more than a thousand people had then signed a letter asking “to put on hold, for the next six months, technologies more powerful than the GPT language engine- 4, the time to regain control of “these unpredictable black boxes”. Today, nearly 32,000 people have signed the letter1.
The answer from the CAQ arrived on June 7, during a working session: no. According to the CAQ, it would be “too early” to talk about the work carried out by the Chief Innovator of Quebec on the issue.
Every day new questions are being raised about the impact of this new technology on our lives.
What about the – very concrete – limitations of AI, such as discriminatory biases, privacy protection, copyright protection, factual errors and lack of contextual understanding of the AI?
All the better if the work of the Chief Innovator helps people better understand the impact of AI in our daily lives. The problem is that we do not know who is consulted, when, how and why. We have had no news for weeks and the CAQ has refused to shed light on this issue before Quebecers.
The PLQ remains convinced that a transparent process is essential so that all of Quebec can accept developments and issues related to developments in AI. Our first comments were summed up in one word: beacons. We will need it badly. We want a human transition to integrate this inevitable technology into our lives.
While we wait for the CAQ government to act, the European Union is getting ahead. Let’s use our strategic advantage to be leaders. We would much rather be the ones who write the rules than simply be subject to them.