CGI Group promises to battle Robot Overlords

Count Canada’s CGI Group (CGI Group Stock Quote, Chart, News, Analysts, Financials TSX:GIB.A) among those you are at least a little worried about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

CGI today announced it had signed the Canadian Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems.

What is the Canadian Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems? Well it’s not exactly about battling Robot Overlords, but the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada says it does look to address more immediate dangers.

“While they have many benefits, advanced generative AI systems also carry a distinctly broad risk profile, due to the broad scope of data on which they are trained, their wide range of potential uses, and the scale of their deployment,” the agency said. “Systems that are made publicly available for a range of different uses can present risks to health and safety, can propagate bias, and carry the potential for broader societal impacts, particularly when used by malicious actors. For example, the capability to generate realistic images and video, or to impersonate the voices of real people, can enable deception at a scale that can damage important institutions, including democratic and criminal justice systems. These systems may also have important implications for individual privacy rights, as highlighted in the G7 Data Protection and Privacy Authorities’ Statement on Generative AI.

Current signatories of the code of conduct include BlackBerry, Opentext, Coveo and Telus.

CGI says joining was the right thing to do.

“At CGI, we are pleased to see the government of Canada taking a strong position on this important topic as we believe that realizing the tremendous benefits of AI innovation requires principles and governance that balance human-centric and responsible use practices,” said CGI president and COO Francois Boulanger. “We are proud to be a signatory, which reinforces our plan to allocate $1-billion over the next three years to continually expand our AI-based capabilities. Around the world, our consultants and experts are trusted advisers to help clients in every industry to responsibly move from experimentation to implementation while accelerating time-to-value from new AI technologies.”

As for those pesky Robot Overlords, most experts say don’t worry: human-level machine intelligence is at least three decades away. Probably.