The Kinew government has embraced new technology as the basis for innovation and enhanced productivity in the economy, including the modernization of government operations. It established a new department for innovation and new technology, created a “blue-ribbon” advisory task force on the use of technology to support the economy, and launched public consultations on how AI systems could be used to promote the rights and opportunities of citizens.

This is part of the background to the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Act (Bill 51) which is about to be sent to a committee of the legislature for detailed study. The bill represents a cautious first step to set some guardrails on the design, application and outcomes of AI in the public sector broadly defined.

Some brief, incomplete comments on AI and its potential impacts set the stage for the analysis of Bill 51.

AI is global in its reach, is evolving rapidly and is largely under the control of a small number of major technology companies. This means regulation of the private-sector use of AI must come mainly at the national level, with the provincial government potentially supplementing those rules.

As a part of its body-worn camera program, the RCMP recently completed a pilot project using artificial intelligence to draft reports. The AI-generated reports are created from audio captured from officers’ body cameras. A report can be drafted in mere seconds. The pilot, which ran for about six months and concluded in January, occurred across eight detachments in British Columbia generating nearly 800 reports.

Harnessing AI to write police reports is replete with some serious and unresolved concerns and must be immediately discontinued.

It isn’t even entirely clear why police need to use AI in the first place.

The primary justification for the expanding use of AI to generate police reports across law enforcement is to free police from the administrative burden of having to write reports in the first place. The idea is that officers could do more relevant police work, presumably patrol work.

There’s an idiom in journalism: the goat must be fed. The proverbial goat has changed over the years. It used to be the next day’s paper. Then it was the 24-hour news cycle. Then the 12-hour news cycle. Then it was websites.