Hi Marita,
Thanks for sending this.
Given the tone of the original letter, I'd be extremely hesitant to participate further with this org unless there's some confidence that "the People's Consultation" is really approaching the issue with an open perspective. I've seen previous examples of this tactic in which *any* submission to their effort just adds submittors to the list of signatories, asserting endorsement of whatever their next attempt produces; indeed it may be no different from the original version that some TC members found problematic.
Frankly, one could use their template to simply craft a TC response directly to ISED, and bypass the gatekeeper altogether. I don't have the cycles to do this single-handedly but would be fine participating in a group effort should the interest exist. Personally I would love to see an approach that advocates for the leveraging of Canada's own considerable expertise in AI with the need for digital sovereignty, attention to accuracy, lower barriers to access, and the use of open source models to maximize transparency. OTOH, I won't be part of anything that wraps technical issues in culture-war tropes.
(In particular, the open letter's demand for excessive guardrails is at best misguided and at worst laughable. I'm working with local versions of AI models on my own computer as we speak, and it's clear to me that as fast as guardrails can be applied to AI models there are others able to disable them. For a quick example, it's easy to download versions of Chinese models such as DeepSeek which undo all the embedded CCP censorship and give frank answers to embarrassing questions.)
- Evan