Father of Captain Canuck returns to Winnipeg

Dynacare workers provide essential services that must be maintained during strike, labour board rules

The Manitoba Labour Board has ruled Dynacare workers are essential employees and their services must be maintained during a labour dispute.

Time for AI guardrails is right now

The genie is most definitely out of the bottle.

And while there’s little chance of putting it back in, we should be very concerned that the people who released it from the bottle are now frantically warning us that it has become disinclined to do their — or our — bidding and seems instead to be increasingly intent on following its own whims and granting wishes to itself.

The figurative genie, in this case, is artificial intelligence, or AI, and in recent weeks many of the tech geniuses responsible for its development and introduction into the digital-information realm have begun asking the U.S. government and even the United Nations to impose limits on the pace and breadth of its growth.

Their fear is that, as AI very quickly continues to advance and develops the ability to make independent decisions and essentially think for itself, it will cease to be a tool controlled by its creators and instead will become a species unto itself that might eventually decide it’s better off without humans continually messing things up.

Netminder no stranger to heavy workload as Jets new No. 1 readies for regular-season start

Stuart Skinner is quick to admit that he wasn’t always wired this way.

As the Winnipeg Jets new starting goalie prepares for his fifth NHL season, Skinner conceded that the accountability aspect that is now synonymous with his character took some time to build up.

“As I grew up and got older, you go through certain things in life that either build character or make things worse for you. It depends on your choice and your decision,” Skinner said during a recent conversation with the Free Press. “I learned it through trial and error. I learned that, sometimes, it’s hard to get honest with yourself… For me, it’s definitely been a road for me to get to a place like this.

“It definitely is one of my pillars. Accountability is so important because that brings you into a spot of what you’re going to do next. It’s easy to let yourself off the hook. I’m more in the business of putting myself on the hook.”

Port of Churchill signs agreement with Dutch port

Arctic Gateway Group, operator of the Port of Churchill, has signed an agreement with the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands to attract business and strengthen supply chains linking Western Canada and Europe.

The agreement enables the two ports to work together to develop new trade in critical minerals and energy products, connect Canadian producers with European buyers, and identify opportunities to improve the supply chain from Western Canadian resource projects through Churchill and into European markets.

The Port of Rotterdam is Europe’s largest port and home to more than 3,000 businesses across its industrial complex, serving as a major gateway for critical raw materials and energy.

Meanwhile, the Port of Churchill has been identified as a transformative national strategy for Canada and is emerging as a northern trade corridor connecting Western Canada’s resources to global markets.

Letters, Oct. 1

Did anyone else see the irony when Premier Wab Kinew announced at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre that Manitoba would adopt permanent Daylight Time (DT) and had hired 17 new psychiatrists this year?