Over at The Conversation, co-written with Natasha Tusikov. In which we express our ongoing frustration with what, at this point, can only be described as the federal government’s refusal to conduct meaningful public consultations on data-governance issues. The government’s just-announced decision to hold a dead-of-summer, month-long, invitation-only consultations (industry, academics, civil society) toward a voluntary code for generative AI is only the latest example of an antipathy to fulsome consultations that stretches back to 2018, affecting everything from the digital economy to online harms and now privacy, data governance and (how I dislike the term) artificial intelligence:

The lack of effective consultation is particularly egregious given the novelty and controversy surrounding generative AI, the technology that burst into public consciousness last year with the unveiling of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.

Limited stakeholder consultations are not appropriate when there exists, as is the case with generative AI, a dramatic lack of consensus regarding its potential benefits and harms.

As Natasha and I have noted many times before, including in this piece in 2018, running a sound consultation isn’t rocket science: direct a public conversation about the issue, build a foundation of knowledge among the public and policymakers. Then you propose legislation and ask for feedback based on the information base you’d established in the initial consultation.

What shouldn’t you do? Hold a consultation at the very time when every sensible person is on vacation, treat a fuzzy issue that implicates interests across the society as a technical issue, and invite in the industries you want to regulate (or ask to sign off on a voluntary code), and which have caused this mess in the first place, to participate in setting the rules.

These are not the actions of a government that takes sound public policymaking seriously:

Government regulation is both legitimate and necessary to address issues like online harms, data protection and preserving Canadian culture. But the Canadian government’s deliberate hobbling of its consultation processes is hurting its regulatory agenda and its ability to give Canadians the regulatory framework we need.

The federal government needs to engage in substantive consultations to help Canadians understand and regulate artificial intelligence, and the digital sphere in general, in the public interest.

Check out the whole piece over at The Conversation. And enjoy this photo of a Lake Ontario laker.