Carole Piovesan (formerly of McCarthy Tétrault, now at INQ Law) describes this as a “step in the process to introducing some more sort of enforceable measures”.

In this case the code of conduct has some fairly innocuous things. Managing risk, curating to avoid biases, safeguarding against malicious use. It’s your basic industrial safety government boilerplate as applied to AI. Here, read it for yourself:

https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/voluntary-code-conduct-responsible-development-and-management-advanced-generative-ai-systems

Now of course our country’s captains of industry have certain reservations. One CEO of a prominent Canadian firm writes that “We don’t need more referees in Canada. We need more builders.”

https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1707017494844547161

Another who you will recognize from my prior post (https://awful.systems/post/298283) is noted in the CBC article as concerned about “the ability to put a stifling growth in the industry”. I am of course puzzled about this concern. Surely companies building these products are trivially capable of complying with such a basic code of conduct?

For my part I have difficulty seeing exactly how “testing methods and measures to assess and mitigate risk of biased output” and “creating safeguards against malicious use” would stifle industry and reduce building. My lack of foresight in this regard could be why I am a scrub behind a desk instead of a CEO.

Oh, and for bonus Canadian content, the name Desmarais from the photo (next to the Minister of Industry) tweaked my memory. Oh right, those Desmarais. Canada will keep on Canada’ing to the end.

https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/helene-and-paul-desmarais-change-agents-and-business-titans/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#Politics