Canada crawling toward AI regulatory regime, but experts say reform is urgent
On Thursday, privacy watchdogs revealed that five million images of shoppers' faces were collected without their consent at a dozen of Canada's most popular malls.
Real estate company Cadillac Fairview embedded cameras equipped with facial-recognition technology, which draws on machine-learning algorithms, in digital information kiosks to discern customers' ages and genders, according to an investigation by the federal, Alberta and B.C. privacy commissioners.
Canada needs to roll out concrete rules that balance privacy and innovation, said Carolina Bessega, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Montreal startup Stradigi AI.
Public trust in artificial intelligence becomes increasingly crucial as machine-learning companies move from the conceptual to the commercial stage, she said. "And the best way to trust AI is to have clear regulations."
Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains tells The Canadian Press that an update to 20-year-old privacy legislation is due "in the coming weeks" to address gaps in personal-data protection, but refused to nail down a timeline.
Bains pointed to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation from 2018 as a model that hands citizens more control over their privacy and digital information through "clear enforcement mechanisms," he said.
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