White Paper

Recent developments in AI, Machine Learning and Robotics have raised concerns about the ethical consequences of both academic and industrial AI research. Leading academics, businessmen and politicians have voiced an increasing number of questions about the consequences of AI not only over people, but also on the large-scale consequences on the the future of work and employment, its social consequences and the sustainability of the planet. In this work, we analyse the use and the occurrence of ethics-related research in leading AI, machine learning and robotics venues. In order to do so we perform long term, historical corpus-based analyses on a large number of flagship conferences and journals. Our experiments identify the prominence of ethics-related terms in published papers and presents several statistics on related topics. Finally, this research provides quantitative evidence on the pressing ethical concerns of the AI community.

In the light of the global challenges facing us, lifelong learning has emerged as one of the keys to improving the quality of life in the 21st century. It is no longer sufficient to have a sound initial education: one must continue to acquire new knowledge and skills to benefit from the new opportunities that advances in science and technology bring, and to cope with the difficulties of life in world of change. The evidence confirms that investing in learning pays off for both individuals and nations, in terms of income, employment, productivity, health and other benefits. Moreover, providing opportunities to learn throughout life turns out to be a crucial factor in the struggle to eradicate poverty and to educate for sustainable development. But adopting the principle of lifelong learning does demand a new vision, one that shifts the emphasis from education to learning; one that moves to a more seamless and user-friendly system; one that recognizes the diversity of ways in which knowledge and skills can be acquired in the information age outside of the formal system. In particular, if progress is to be made in reducing poverty and ensuring development is sustainable, governments and the international community will need to meet their commitments and take the steps needed to make lifelong learning for all a reality.

I am delighted to be back at Queen’s, where I earned an undergraduate degree in economics some 40 years ago. I remember this time of year well. It is a stressful time—whether you are stressed about starting your career, getting into your next degree program, or just getting this year’s work done. Those of you who hope to join the workforce may be feeling both excitement and nervousness about an uncertain future. At least the macroeconomic situation you face is a positive one. The economy has created 283,000 jobs over the past 12 months, and the unemployment rate is as low as it has been in more than 40 years. However, this may still leave you wondering about the future. We have all heard stories of people struggling to get a foot in the door, of being overqualified and underemployed, and of the challenges of building a stable career in the “gig economy.” Meanwhile, automation and digitalization are disrupting entire industries and threatening to make some jobs obsolete. Given this backdrop, I will use my time today to talk about Canada’s labour market—why the central bank pays such close attention to it, and what role monetary policy can play in its performance. I will also take the risk of speculating a little on what lies further ahead for you—on the future of work.

Canada’s polytechnics have significant untapped innovation and skills development potential that is key to remedying persistent productivity and competitiveness challenges. Investing in and scaling the existing capabilities of polytechnics can yield valuable benefits to the Canadian economy. Polytechnics Canada, the national association of research-intensive polytechnics, colleges and institutes of technology, presents a suite of recommendations that right-size, re-balance and retool federal supports, enhancing productivity and competitiveness: Grow support to polytechnic and college applied research and innovation; Improve business access to polytechnic innovation capability; Create a regional commercialization voucher program. Invest in new labour market information tools; Scale federal work-integrated learning supports; Invest in prior learning recognition supports for mid-career workers.

This study, commissioned by the Center for American Progress, examines broader economic considerations—jobs, incomes, and economic growth—through the lens of two government initiatives this year by the Obama administration and Congress. The first is the set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The second is the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act which is now before Congress. Our analysis in this paper shows that these measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. This estimated $150 billion in new spending annually includes government funding but is notably dominated by private-sector investments. We estimate this sustained expansion in clean-energy investments can generate a net increase of about 1.7 million jobs. This expansion in job opportunities can continue as long as the economy maintains a commitment to clean-energy investments in the $150 billion per year range. If clean-energy investments expand still faster, overall job creation will increase correspondingly. These investments could, therefore, not only guide us out of our fossil-fuel dependent crisis, but serve as a powerful engine of economic recovery and long-term economic vigor in the U.S.

We are living through a profound transition towards the Next Digital Economy. Even if the outcomes of this transition may be positive for many, the changes it imposes could be difficult. Each previous economic transition has spawned new ways of thinking, redirected human energies, disrupted ways of life, overturned powerful institutions, and transformed the built and natural environments. The same could happen again, and this time the speed and scale of transformation might make adaptation more challenging than ever before. The Next Digital Economy promises to revolutionize value chains and introduce a different model for the production and consumption of goods and services. Much of our economic activity may become digitally intermediated, customized, on demand, and globally distributed. Eight digital technologies are maturing and combining to change the economy: The Internet of Things will collect vast amounts of data and bring it to bear on the physical world. Artificial intelligence (AI) and automated cognitive tasks will introduce new economic actors. Robotics will perform physical labour and provide an embodied platform for AI. Advanced telepresence will allow us to project ourselves and our expertise anywhere in the world that is connected to networks. Virtual reality will offer immersive non-physical worlds, while mixed reality will combine physical and virtual worlds, creating a third space distinct from both. Advanced materials are enabling the production of micro- and nanoscale devices that can bring digitization to many new areas at low power. Decentralized production technologies such as 3D printing could use locally available inputs, including new biomaterials, to manufacture countless products on demand for local markets. Blockchain technologies create unique, non-copiable digital assets. This enables secure, low-cost transactions between parties who do not know each other.

The objective of this project was to identify the next generation of global challenges for consideration by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as part of its Imagining Canada’s Future (ICF) initiative. Climate change is a familiar global challenge. While that problem is far from solved, we were focused on what else lies over the horizon. The challenges we explored have several shared characteristics. They are emerging problems with the potential to shape society in profound ways. Publicly funded research could help inform public dialogue and policy development. Each challenge is multi-disciplinary and requires broad cooperation to solve. Many emerge from technological innovations and, as current headlines attest, those challenges are perhaps in greatest need of attention from social science and humanities researchers. The point at which each challenge may become pressing varies but all of the challenge themes would benefit from proactive, transdisciplinary exploration and discussion

We are living through a transition to the Next Digital Economy, in which much of our economic activity may become digitally intermediated, customized, on demand, and globally distributed. As a result, the models for production and consumption of goods and services are shifting, which could affect both the amount and the nature of work. As a broad suite of technologies – such as task-based platforms, telepresence, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain – mature and combine, they are poised to have a particularly disruptive impact on employment and the experience of work. This paper explores five key game changers for the future of work. A game changer is a significant shift in the way we think about or do something. Each section describes the basic elements of the game changer and identifies implications for public policy. Work moves from being long-term and time-based to temporary and task based. In a globally competitive labour market where many people are paid by the task, how can governments ensure that minimum wage and employment standards are met, and social support systems are effective? AI and the automation of tasks could put people out of work long before technologies replace entire jobs. How would people cope with reskilling and job loss when tasks could replace jobs as the basic unit of work and are being automated across all sectors? AI decreases the scarcity of knowledge workers, potentially allowing jobless growth in knowledge industries. If knowledge and some forms of intelligence can be replicated as needed, what might happen to cognitive labour and ‘thinking’ professions in the future? Combined digital technologies could reduce the need for human intermediaries who provide trust and security. What might happen if technology eliminates human transactional roles from the workforce? Where people work and earn may not be where they live and spend. What might happen to taxation, social benefits, and the secondary economy when a person can live anywhere in the world but work in Canada, or vice-versa? Exploring these changes can help identify potential challenges and opportunities, which provides the foundation for a productive dialogue on future-oriented policy.

In order to stay competitive and improve their performance, manufacturing SMEs must develop new strategies and new business processes that rely on the use of information technology and communication (ICT). Currently, the challenges for SMEs are numerous with one hand, the transformation that occurs at high speed in manufacturing companies, including through massive public investment, and secondly, the intensification e-commerce that changes not only the retail business models, but becomes a lever management and coordination of supply chains. In this context, companies that want to remain competitive and increase their use of digital technology must have leaders who are equipped to understand the opportunities of digital and teams who have the skills to make the most of ICT. Indeed, investment in the acquisition and use of new ICT is only part of the equation, the balance based on the ability of employees of a company to make use of ICT, but also to intensify this use in their work context. The role of users in the development of the digital capacity of the organization is central today. Clearly, the development of digital skills is at the heart of the modernization of the industrial fabric Quebec. 7 In addition to the challenges for the organization, the development of this digital skills a challenge since the workers have to adapt to technological and organizational changes. There is also no doubt that mastery of digital skills is a professional success factor, the results published by the OECD indicates that "the fact of achieving the highest levels of problem solving skills to using ICT increases the probability to be more active, for an adult, by 6 percentage points compared to individuals at the lowest levels in this area, even after controlling for factors such as age, gender, level of education. "1 In addition, adults without experience with ICT are less likely to be active and when they are, are paid less. But what "digital skills" need organizations and their staff? What are the characteristics of these skills? CEFRIO has, in 2012, wanted to explore the issue of digital skills in the context of digital switchover SMEs. He then commissioned a research team under the measure 2.0 SMEs formed Amélie Bernier and Dragos Vieru TELUQ and Simon Bourdeau from the University of Quebec in Montreal, to offer some answers to these questions . [googletranslate_en]