AI could have catastrophic consequences — is Canada ready?
CBC
Nations — Canada included — are running out of time to design and implement comprehensive safeguards on the development and deployment of advanced artificial intelligence systems, a leading AI safety company warned this week.
In a worst-case scenario, power-seeking superhuman AI systems could escape their creators' control and pose an "extinction-level" threat to humanity, AI researchers wrote in a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of State entitled Defence in Depth: An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI.
The department insists the views the authors expressed in the report do not reflect the views of the U.S. government.
But the report's message is bringing the Canadian government's actions to date on AI safety and regulation back into the spotlight — and one Conservative MP is warning the government's proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act is already out of date.
The U.S.-based company Gladstone AI, which advocates for the responsible development of safe artificial intelligence, produced the report. Its warnings fall into two main categories.
The first concerns the risk of AI developers losing control of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system. The authors define AGI as an AI system that can outperform humans across all economic and strategically relevant domains.
While no AGI systems exist to date, many AI researchers believe they are not far off.
"There is evidence to suggest that as advanced AI approaches AGI-like levels of human and superhuman general capability, it may become effectively uncontrollable. Specifically, in the absence of countermeasures, a highly capable AI system may engage in so-called power seeking behaviours," the authors wrote, adding that these behaviours could include strategies to prevent the AI itself from being shut off or having its goals modified.
In a worst-case scenario, the authors warn that such a loss of control "could pose an extinction-level threat to the human species."
"There's this risk that these systems start to get essentially dangerously creative. They're able to invent dangerously creative strategies that achieve their programmed objectives while having very harmful side effects. So that's kind of the risk we're looking at with loss of control," Gladstone AI CEO Jeremie Harris, one of the authors of the report, said Thursday in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics.
The second category of catastrophic risk cited in the report is the potential use of advanced AI systems as weapons.
"One example is cyber risk," Harris told P&P host David Cochrane. "We're already seeing, for example, autonomous agents. You can go to one of these systems now and ask,... 'Hey, I want you to build an app for me, right?' That's an amazing thing. It's basically automating software engineering. This entire industry. That's a wicked good thing.
"But imagine the same system ... you're asking it to carry out a massive distributed denial of service attack or some other cyber attack. The barrier to entry for some of these very powerful optimization applications drops, and the destructive footprint of malicious actors who use these systems increases rapidly as they get more powerful."
Harris warned that the misuse of advanced AI systems could extend into the realm of weapons of mass destruction, including biological and chemical weapons.
For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian.
The year that saw the remains of two First Nations women brought home from a Manitoba landfill and a search get underway for the remains of a third showed how far reconciliation efforts have come — and how far they still need to go, the families say
The RCMP has just released a warning stating there are dangerous, armed individuals on Big Island Cree Nation, near Meadow Lake.
A new land-use plan that Alberta’s government has for the province’s Upper Smoky region is drawing criticism from environmentalists who say they believe it lacks sufficient environmental safeguards, which poses a significant threat to the endangered southern woodland caribou.
Canadian officials made pains to show they were cracking down on illicit drug production in the country in 2025.
A year after the City of Hamilton cancelled its overnight warming bus, it is funding a new all-night warming centre for men at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on James Street S.
This year has, without a doubt, been a turbulent one for the Canadian auto industry. Uncertainty dominated the sector — both for auto workers hit with job changes and companies trying to manage a mix of tariffs and changing market conditions.
A woman died at a ski resort in the Canadian Rockies over the weekend, after falling into deep snow.
Two pregnant women who would otherwise be living in a cold tent. A man whose leg wound was so bad it required intravenous medication. Two young people who no longer need to couch surf to get by.
The province has added 12 kilometres of designated trails for all-terrain vehicles in western Prince Edward Island that will connect existing routes in O’Leary and Tignish.
Every year, CBC North publishes hundreds of stories online — breaking news, investigative reporting, political coverage, community features, longform storytelling, and much more.
After a wild year in Canadian politics that began with Justin Trudeau's resignation and ended with Conservative MPs crossing the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government, 2026 is shaping up to be just as action-packed.
It became a rallying cry, a cultural touchstone, a marketing strategy and — our favourite — often described in international media as "a hockey term" or "a Canadian phrase."