The industrial revolution was the first large scale introduction of machines doing work traditionally performed by humans and since then the concept of having machines, or later computers, replace workers has been on the minds of employers, legislators, workers/unions and of course society as a whole. During and coming out of World War 2, a Computer was a job title describing human work, largely performed by women and people of colour who would manually do complex math to assist with military calculations and codebreaking among other applications. Even large departments of these Computers couldn’t keep up with the calculations required though. Charles Babbage is considered the grandfather of the modern digital computer, and he considered it a way to replace the human Computers. The modern digital computer was introduced then for “managerial optimization” to allow more room for the privileged and for what he saw as the intellectual class that wasn’t seen as replaceable by machines at the time. The Rand corporation think tank that had used the modern digital computer to predict and model how to win wars through system engineering thought computers and human minds were, ”species of the same genus.” In the 1980’s it was thought that adding knowledge and expertise to computers of the day from subject matter experts to build a database of knowledge accessible to anyone, motivated by democracy not corporations was the future. But we live in a largely corporate society, and we did not see those equal opportunities rise up. It is harder to get the expertise than we thought as AI has failed to help everyone equally. Those in silicon valley believe in a ”technical manifest destiny” that states that AI will weave its way into every aspect of our life inevitably. At one time it was thought that computers would keep learning to the point that they would develop their own intelligence and get rid of people all together and while that has mostly shown up in Hollywood, we as people should absolutely be asking questions around the use of AI in our lives.

Recent polling shows that (Angus-Reid 11/25) only 11% of respondents were optimistic about AI with 32% viewed as cautious, 34% pessimistic sceptics and 23% as alarmed critics. Even among optimists there is concern about misinformation, AI in advertising, over-dependence on technology, and privacy. While in some cases there are reports of having positive experiences with AI technologies in the work place, far too often it can also be a threat to jobs and public service delivery among other areas.

There have been examples of data privacy and security breaches as well of lack of transparency and with no active registry at this time, it can be hard to tell where it might be being used in the workplace at times. One of the other major issues is also environmental. AI data centres are being built across Canada but they take up a huge amount of natural resources and impact the people near by. Often these are indigenous communities. As a country we are appealing to do business with due to our clean water and energy availability but people also worry if this resource drain will drive up costs for everyone?

I am proud to have been asked to sit on the NUPGE (National Union of Public Government Employees) national AI Committee as well as the BC Federation of Labour AI committee where I will represent the Compensation Employees Union and learn more about and  engage in work that will serve us and hopefully assist others in the labour movement as well. More to come.

CEU President, Laura Snow