Simona Chiose

Public affairs at #UofT @uoftgro - innovation, higher ed, life in TO. @globeandmail alumna, storyteller.

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

Why @Layer6AI hires from its own backyard https://t.co/fucdT2xIPR

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

On war by people who don’t, can’t, won’t read: “The more technologically sophisticated war becomes, the more dangerous it is to place it in the hands of people untrained in irony, contingency and the darker constants of human nature.” https://t.co/LNWsAJf2EM via @NYTOpinion

[Mustafa Suleyman @mustafasuleyman]

What I call Seemingly Conscious AI has been keeping me up at night - so let's talk about it. What it is, why I'm worried, why it matters, and why thinking about this can lead to a better vision for AI. One thing is clear: doing nothing isn't an option. 1/

[Andrew Thomson @Thomson416]

If here was ever a time for Canada to find some actual cash for R&D, it would be now … As the Americans step back, it’s time for Canada to step up.

[Brandi Morin @Songstress28]

Here is what Tsuu T’ina Minor Chief Steven Crowchild said to Trump (as per National Chief Cindy Woodhouse via Facebook):

“When it came to that one individual, I almost didn’t stay. I was filled with rage and I knew by then, that the world was watching. I was going to go home, because I didn’t want to do anything to bring negativity to my people. However, I consulted with some close people, and based on wise feedback I stayed. Visibility is key, diplomacy is important. There was no one else there.

I prayed and tried my best to observe everything. I prayed to creator, my grandmothers, grandfathers, and my mom. I asked them to guide my words and actions in that moment. As I stood on the tarmac next to my good friend Jyoti, I watched Trump approach each delegate before me, and I thought of those suffering around the world, my son, my nation, my ancestors, and waited for him to approach.

Instead of war, I chose peace. Instead of hate, I chose love. Instead of hostility, I tried my best to show humanity. He was just another person, like the ones I greeted before him (some would say a horrible person and we all know many reasons why). I felt strong with my feather hat, which I received a transfer for yesterday, my treaty suit, my beadwork, and good medicine. I stood taller than him as a proud Tsuut’ina. Close as it gets.

I spoke my Tsuut’ina language. I showed him my treaty medal and told him it’s older than Canada and that this is native land. I spoke for my elders, babies, and future generations, and spoke for peace and protecting water for future generations. I tried to say as much as I could, as wisely as I could, while representing with honour and dignity. Whether he listened or not, time will tell.

I don’t care if it was anyone else, in fact, I wish I was someone else. But I’m glad that the world got to witness a treaty suit, treaty medal, beautiful beadwork, precious feather hat, and us. I take assurance in knowing a message of protecting water and peace was spoken to world leaders.”

[David Frum @davidfrum]

What was Noem supposed to do? How about this,

"I see my friend Senator Padilla has joined us. Do you mind if I finish my previous answer, then I'll address your question. Do we have a seat in front for Senator Padilla?"

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

I debated whether to share my story on here, but I guess I will.

I think there's an idea out there that millions of violent criminals are pouring across the border, carrying machetes and drugs, looking to harm Americans. Certainly, while some people fall into that category, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants don't.

My family escaped Vietnam after the Tet Offensive and went through an arduous journey that eventually landed them in the Canada. My father worked there for a time as a janitor; my mother, a secretary. When work fell through, my dad was offered to work with his sister in the United States, so he went, as our family needed money. He ended up staying in the US longer than he was supposed to — not knowing immigration laws — and asked my mom to come be with him. Of course, she went and carried me over the border while I was still a baby.

I'm still unsure whether we technically broke an immigration law. The border between Canada and the United States was pretty porous (as it is today, for the most part). But either way, since I came here without legal documentation, I eventually fell into the category of being an undocumented immigrant. Yet, I've been in the United States since I was a baby. My identity and roots are very much based in this country, no different from anyone else.

The lack of legal immigration has totally shaped my life. It has made every interaction with the law much scarier. It has shaped which opportunities I could or could not get. It has taken an emotional toll, as this legal issue hangs over your head like a black cloud.

There are millions of people in my situation — people who were brought here as children, some babies, and were unable to raise their hand during this process and say "maybe we should hire a lawyer." Parents may have crossed the border not knowing about the law, as the law can be pretty confusing and lawyers are expensive. Perhaps, in the end, they should have hired a lawyer; but sometimes life is messy. In the end, they crossed for the same reason many people rise every day: to support their families.

I think it's unreasonable to deport millions of people who have contributed positively to society. It's simply not true that the majority of these people are violent criminals carrying drugs. Many own small businesses; many work as skilled laborers (including garment workers!). The vast majority are good, honest people. For those of us who grew up in the United States, sending us "back" to our "home" country would mean sending someone to a foreign land, as they grew up in the United States. Tearing families apart based on immigration status seems inhumane.

About twenty years ago, I watched with some small measure of hope that the Dream ACT would pass and help a portion of undocumented immigrants. I saw people march angrily in the streets (something I supported). But I was dismayed to see nothing really come about. In fact, when Obama passed DACA, I was skeptical that it would be sensible to give your information to the federal government without a guaranteed path to citizenship. It seems that the Trump administration may use those lists to hunt down immigrants.

I think the ICE sweeps are inhumane. I support and admire the protestors who are putting their bodies on the line for non-violent resistance. Ultimately, I think we need to solve this issue on a systemic level. It's unreasonable to me to expect that the government will deport some 10-20 million people. Even deporting 1 million will cause an insane amount of chaos, not to mention an incredible amount of wasteful government spending. The militarization of law enforcement is over the top and only escalate the situation.

I have seen people march on this issue, only for it to be dropped later and dissolve into quiet grumbles. In the end, nothing is done for immigrants. Time passes until decades later, we have another political crisis like the one we have today. This cycle seems unsustainable. I hope people sustain this energy to solve the immigration issue and put undocumented immigrants — most who are peaceful, skilled, and hard-working citizens — on a path to citizenship. As time continues to go by, many undocumented immigrants are seeing their lives wasted away.

If you care about this issue, I hope you get involved on the long haul: volunteer for pro-immigrant groups, donate to mutual aid, and perhaps pursue career paths that help people in this situation. I was moved to read someone on here say that, when they found their employee was undocumented, they helped them get a green card. The path was difficult, as our immigration system is broken (it took them 11 years). But I can tell you that this is like pulling someone drowning in raging waters.

Ultimately, I hope me sharing this story helps push back against the idea that all undocumented immigrants are MS-13 members. I know many people in my position and they are all like your neighbors.

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

VC helpline with $100M commitment set up to fund American researchers, because "seeding scientists is not a philanthropic endeavor, but one with commercial benefits." https://t.co/T7AJP53HWs

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

Survey shows that as risks loom, Canadians are eager to grow new companies and smart champions.

[David Coletto 🇨🇦 @DavidColetto]

From Precarity to a Prepared and Competitive Canada - Abacus Data https://t.co/vInJHYxwZP

[David Coletto 🇨🇦 @DavidColetto]

Canadians see global talent as key to economic growth—92% support attracting healthcare workers and 82% tech professionals.

New Abacus Data study with @UofT highlights support for strategic immigration.

Details here: https://t.co/vInJHYwZah

#cdnpoli #cdnecon #futureready

[Patrick Brethour @PatrickBrethour]

Globe editorial: Canada can be a refuge for U.S. researchers
https://t.co/FEFnOVqVe5

[Jeffrey Sachs @JeffreyASachs]

Woah. Amazing get for UofT. Well done.

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

May I strongly recommend European policy makers and pundits to read Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace before pondering to slash the welfare state to build the warfare state.

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

Extraordinary exchanges.

[Josh Wingrove @josh_wingrove]

"Your country is in big trouble," Trump says.

"I know, I know," Zelenskiy says.

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

@Sean_Speer Does Malcom Jolley agree with this position?

[Simona Chiose @srchiose]

With the urgency on trade issues, no attention left to defend Canadian collaboration with U.S. on health, development and infrastructure through #USAID #WHO. Another effect of pyromania.

[John G. Murphy @JGodiasMurphy]

Statement of the @USChamber: Tariffs Are Not the Answer

[Daron Acemoglu @DAcemogluMIT]

A summary of my thinking on shared prosperity, work and AI in ten bullet points.

This is partly motivated by the fact that I have received questions from several people on these issues, and I feel like it may be useful to lay out my thinking in simple terms in one place. We are also about to have a new administration in the United States, so perhaps it’s a good time to think about some aspirations (even though I view it very unlikely that the incoming administration will move us in this direction).

1. Shared prosperity is key.

By shared prosperity I mean economic growth from which most groups (e.g., men vs. women, different ethnic groups, different education groups, different regions, etc.) benefit more or less in the same way (e.g., their incomes growing at similar rates). Economic growth that just enriches one group greatly and generates only small benefits for many other groups is not shared prosperity. This is mostly an ethical precept, but it can also be justified because a peaceful, harmonious society does require shared prosperity. It is also a realistic one. It does not require that all inequalities are wiped away at one fell swoop.

2. Shared prosperity cannot be achieved just with redistribution.

It needs to be rooted in the labor market, in (good) jobs and in wage growth. The safety net and some amount of redistribution are important. But these are not sufficient to generate shared prosperity. Even in social democratic Nordic countries, where redistribution is most robust, it is not the source of shared prosperity. Wage and employment growth have been much more important historically. Redistribution-based shared prosperity doesn’t make political economic sense either: if some portion of the population is continuously impoverished, they wouldn’t have the political power to ensure that robust redistribution remains.

Moreover, even if we had a system where pre-tax inequality was growing a lot but there was enough redistribution to ensure the disposable incomes of all demographic groups grew robustly, it would have other serious problems. People without jobs and those whose pre-tax incomes were not growing wouldn’t feel that they were contributing to society. Worse, we would head towards a truly two-tier society with just some fraction of the population flourishing economically and receiving all the social status as they are the source of all earnings and tax revenues out of which others are receiving redistribution.

3. AI is here to stay and will be very impactful.

I have little doubt that AI will be a defining technology for our future. It can also deliver significant productivity benefits, though I think whether it will do so or not is contingent on how we develop it, and its full effects will take a while to be materialized. There is a lot of uncertainty about AI’s effects. In my opinion, it is also difficult to know what AGI (artificial general intelligence) would mean and when it may arrive, and this adds to the uncertainty about AI.

In sum, we cannot think of the future of work and shared prosperity without understanding AI’s impact.

4. AI’s direction can be pro-worker or anti-worker.

A basic pillar of my thinking and my research is that all technologies are malleable – meaning that they can be developed in many different ways, with very different consequences about who wins and who loses. This is doubly and triply true for AI, which is a broad, flexible technological platform. AI can be developed for prediction tasks; it could be developed for generating text and images; it can be used as an informational tool, etc. In all of these cases, AI can be more anti-worker (meaning that it focuses on automating tasks and disempowering workers) or pro-worker (meaning that it can become an information technology for enabling workers to perform their tasks better and to be able to branch into more sophisticated and new tasks). How AI will be developed is a choice.

5. Currently it is being developed as an anti-worker technology.

The main way in which companies are thinking of monetizing AI is by automation and more powerful digital ads, and neither of which would contribute to a pro-worker agenda. Moreover, the way in which foundation models are developed and trained is shaped by the expectation and desire to reach AGI. But AGI would mean more automation – if AI can achieve general intelligence and perform almost all tasks as well as most humans, then it will take away these tasks from humans. This current path will therefore lead to job displacement and lower wages, and is thus inconsistent with shared prosperity.

6. To redirect it, you need policies.

Putting the previous two points together, we can conclude that while there was a direction for AI consistent with shared prosperity, we are not pursuing it. Moreover, the industry will not suddenly change direction. Therefore, there needs to be an intervention, and this can only come from government policies (across the world) to encourage new directions and also put regulations to prevent the more harmful uses of AI (some of which are synergistic with the anti-worker direction).

7. To redirect it, you need competition.

New technologies especially radically new directions typically come from new companies, not established incumbents. This is doubly so when the incumbents we are talking about are the largest corporations humanity has ever seen. Hence, the pro-worker AI agenda should be symbiotic with agenda of increasing competition and breaking the hold of the existing powerful incumbents on the tech sector and the direction of AI.

8. To redirect it, you need different architectural choices.

Perhaps even more controversially, redirecting AI may need architectural choices. To put it simply, pro-worker AI need to be an information tool in the hands of workers. This is impossible unless AI provides reliable, understandable and real-time information to workers in a range of occupations. The current architecture of AI (partly fueled by AGI dreams) is about AI acting autonomously and has also led to a black box structure of AI. Instead, the pro-worker direction AI needs the tools to provide advice to human decision-makers (rather than make autonomous decisions), and the best autonomous decisions are not necessarily the best advice/recommendation/information to workers. Moreover, pro-worker AI needs to be understandable by human decision-makers, which is not possible with current black box structure of foundation models complemented with fine-tuning and other kinds of ex post training of pre-trained models.

Stepping back, in an ideal world government intervention should be neutral towards different technological choices. After all, entrepreneurs and innovators know which technologies to develop and how to develop them much better than bureaucrats and lawmakers. But in certain situations where different directions of technologies have major social consequences (for example, in the choice of fossil-fuel versus green technologies), then government intervention may need to impact technology and design choices as well. Nevertheless, it is important that this is done in the most minimalist possible way, so that innovation incentives and choices are not impacted beyond the extent necessary for a more socially beneficial direction to emerge.

9. All of this requires democracy.

Since the current direction is chosen and supported by the largest and most powerful corporations in the world, only robust democratic pressure can lay the foundations of a redirection.

10. The Catch-22: AI endangers democracy.

Tech choices in the past, especially those surrounding social media, have been damaging to democracy and active political participation of the citizenry. The same is likely to be true for AI, and even more so. First, AI is likely to be a very powerful technology for manipulation, and this can exacerbate platform choices that can make money while discouraging democratic citizenship. Second, the current ethos in the AI sector is quite anti-democratic, with leading technologists and entrepreneurs believing that experts (themselves) should be empowered to make all key decisions and democratic processes get in the way of the necessary AI acceleration.

This not only creates a Catch-22 (we need democracy to redirect AI, but AI has already damaged democracies) it also suggests that redirecting AI will be very difficult. But I still believe it’s not completely hopeless.

[U of T News @UofTNews]

#UofT is increasing funding for PhD & SJD (doctor of juridical science) students across its three campuses in an effort to alleviate students’ financial stress, advance equity, increase access to doctoral research opportunities & boost research outcomes. https://t.co/0aMzefE4u4