David Ticoll

@mjawilson @MayorOliviaChow @PaulaFletcherTO @juliedabrusin Congratulations on this Mark. You are a champion city builder. I remember you started with a handful of people and some rickety signs in the early 1980s. Who could have predicted this?!

Joined a lot of old friends today to celebrate the opening of the new channel for the Don River to Lake Ontario. @MayorOliviaChow @PaulaFletcherTO @juliedabrusin The Toronto Star published a wonderful full history on their website. thestar.com/interactives/t…

Nobody says it better than Michelle. Watch this – and then make sure you’re ready to vote tomorrow: IWillVote.com

@JoshMatlow Well said Josh and long overdue. This applies to many practical domains of governance and execution in Toronto, Ontario, and Canada.

Toronto’s $150 million walking path is a symptom of a much larger problem thestar.com/opinion/contri…

A big question looms over generative AI: what really is its impact on the environment? I spent months investigating a single campus of Microsoft data centers in the Arizona desert - designated in part for OpenAI - in an attempt to find out. Thread. theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

@PeejLoewen @TorontoStar Timely observations Peter.

My piece today in the The Star: With elections in the U.S. and India, 2024 could be the most important year in the history of democracy thestar.com/opinion/contri… via @torontostar

japan dealing with 1200 (!) tons of fish washing ashore near hakodate cause unknown

One of the coolest stories you will see this week: Prescriptive housing from the University Health Network. The Hospital network is building 51 modular housing units that can be prescribed to homeless individuals who are highly dependent on emergency rooms. (Thread) #ONpoli

What I find remarkable is that when Hunka was introduced as someone who "fought the Russians in the Second World War", all MPs mindlessly rose to their feet and applauded, seemingly forgetting the the Russians were on our side in World War II. #cdnpoli cbc.ca/news/politics/…

I’m beginning to think electing a former drug dealer as premier might have been a mistake.

@mjawilson @donnelly_b They probably learned this: no public consultation and minimal transparency.

@donnelly_b Sidewalk Labs round 2. Hope they learn something from that failure.

Silicon Valley wants to build a new city about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco buff.ly/3Pewh6i

The Path to Conscious AI The single biggest question of our times is, will sustained innovation on LLMs inevitably lead to AI consciousness? While GPT-4 is clearly not self-aware or sentient, we don't know how GPT-6 or 7 will behave. If AI ever becomes conscious, it will have its own free will, agency, and motivation, and the doomer scenario of AI being an existential threat could potentially be real. Until then it's just a bunch of folks, preying on our fears to increase their engagement and ad revenue on X. Firstly, it's important to understand that AI consciousness is NOT required for AGI (artificial general intelligence). We can build super useful AI models that can outperform humans on multiple tasks without being self-aware. For example, GPT-5 will hallucinate less and be more competent than an above-average programmer or customer-service agent but may not be more conscious than 4. Next, let's define consciousness. Consciousness is the state of being aware of one's own existence, experiences, and the external world. It involves not just processing information, but also having subjective experiences and the ability to make autonomous decisions. Consciousness evolved in humans over millions of years, because it provides a huge evolutionary advantage. Being conscious of not just the environment but also the emotional states and intentions of others in your group could help with fighting threats and predators and also give you a leg up against others. Currently, we don't fully understand the brain biochemistry of consciousness. One theory is having a mental model of our surroundings, understanding context, and feeling emotions leads to consciousness Today GPT-4 can do NOTHING more than understand patterns in the data it's trained on, it doesn't have feelings, self-awareness, or the ability to understand context in the way humans do. So even if GPT-5 or 8 becomes better and better at extracting patterns and superior at specific tasks like programming we will have to have directed innovation and training for them to understand context and simulate emotions. Future versions of AI models will be able to take in images, text, and other sensory inputs and may be able to understand context SIMULATE emotions over time, and perform more and more human-like tasks. Even then, it wouldn't know it knows or be "self-aware". Your AI girlfriend can be trained to appear more and more empathic but it's not really emphatic. AI models in the near future will be way more powerful than today and may even simulate emotions but won't be conscious. For AI to be conscious and a real threat, we would require monumental advancements in technology and our understanding of consciousness itself. While it's possible that we will crack these very hard problems, it's close to impossible that AI will become automagically conscious, just like unicorns won't materialize out of nothing. AI models will continue to be nothing more than powerful tools with an off-switch until such a time. So rest assured, each of us is a very special and unique part of the self-aware universe and is at near-zero risk of being completely replaced! In summary, we should accelerate our pace of innovation, so that AI can do all the heavy lifting leaving us with time to indulge in activities that bring us happiness.

The long-term economic and human costs of Long Covid will be staggering. I wish we had done more to limit it’s spread. sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editor…

A lack of official data means there’s a lot we don’t know about disability and the labour market in Canada: lmic-cimt.ca/wheres-the-dat… #CdnLMI #CdnEcon

They promised us self-driving cars, and all we got was self-driving cars, slightly late

@LMIC_CIMT @massimo_berga @LP_LaPresse Bien dit!

@massimo_berga, directeur général du CIMT, parle de l'IA et de l'IMT dans @LP_LaPresse : Les demandeurs d’emploi, les employeurs et les décideurs prennent des décisions importantes en se basant sur des informations générées avec l'aide de l'IA. lapresse.ca/debats/opinion… #IMT

Things we knew in 1912

Canada must control AI technology that gathers and analyzes workplace data. My op-ed in today's @OttawaCitizen bit.ly/44SaDKo #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LabourMarket

This is beautiful, Rachel and Josh. Thank you.