iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 18h

The techbro bait-and-switch: “Many health-care professionals and medical technology experts say the chatbot fills the need for more reliable, Canada-specific health information than people get from using a general AI chatbot…” “Steinberg said the chatbot is not meant to replace health professionals”

thestar.com

Loblaw’s PC Health launches chatbot as more people turn to AI for health info. Here’s what to know

Users who get prescriptions at Shoppers Drug Mart, which is owned by Loblaw, can opt to link their pharmacy records to PC Chat to receive more tailored responses, the company

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Gerard Toal @critgeopolitics.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My Critical Geopolitics seminar tonight is revisiting this 2020 book by @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social & @dhnexon.net. Both its theory & its Trump analysis still resonate. But we're much further along the unravelling road they describe. I understand there's a second edition in the works.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In practice, AI literacy doesn’t start with building the tool for your personal use. It starts with understanding yourself as a collection of tasks who should subcontract those out to a machine. Almost no regular person’s life currently exists as such.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We are talking about a radical transformation of the understanding of self for this to get off the ground.

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tante @tante.cc · 28/09/2026

I was interviewed by Kathryn Carter. We talked about luddism, tech as political artefact and how to regain agency in this capitalist hellscape. I really enjoyed the conversation though to be fair, Kathryn's questions and comments make me sound way smarter than I actually am.

kathryn-carter.com

Your life is larger than an LLM — KATHRYN CARTER

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tante @tante.cc · 28/09/2026

"So what’s the AI artist paradox? It’s that by either having or lacking intelligence, AI-based art generators preclude the existence of so-called “AI artists”. By manifesting either an artwork or an artist, the AI monopolizes artistic contribution." The AI Artist Paradox

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Rewatching the #AFL Grand Final. The last four minutes are like a horror film, the Dockers undone by their own hubris. Has to be one of the greatest collapses/comebacks in all of professional sports.

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

So basically Moopsey but for personal data.

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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Just thrilled to see the re-release of Cyberselfish. It’s a hell of a book. Downright prescient. The only mistake Borsook made was in writing it a couple decades before people were willing to listen.

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Jörg Broschek 🇨🇦 @jbroschek.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Confirms what motivated our call for a Royal Commission in early 2025, which could have facilitated this form of engagement: "Global Canada’s report should serve a more meta purpose: it clearly shows that Canadians are informed and interested, and that they want to be engaged on these questions."

thestar.com

Justin Ling: Mark Carney may appeal to vast swathes of the country, but there are some things about Canadians he doesn’t seem to get

Rather than merely address global policymakers and CEOs, the prime minister needs to talk to more everyday voters.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The problem isn't rogue #AI models, it's *negligent companies*. If a biomedical firm put their product in public water supply because they wanted to test it 'in the real world', they'd be treated as criminal at corporate & individual level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue

Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

FWIW, the Financial Stability Board is an inappropriate model for “AI” governance. Finance is a global system. AI is a suite of technologies dominated by a few giant US and Chinese companies. In areas like biological weapons, we already have tech agnostic treaties regulating their development.

thestar.com

Canada’s AI minister takes aim at Big Tech’s plan to police itself

With artificial intelligence giants taking to the global stage this week urging for technology slowdowns, Evan Solomon says it’s not up to tech companies to dictate their own guardrails.

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🔫Scott Martin🛼 @youcaughtscott.com · 24/09/2026

OpenAI needs to be dismantled over not reporting this.

The violent contents of Van Rootselaar's two
ChatGPT accounts, detailed here publicly for the first time, are far more extensive and disturbing than previously known. Van Rootselaar, who was 18 at the time of the attack, also used OpenAl's chatbot to upload bloody images of extreme violence and photos of harm to herself. She pushed ChatGPT to create graphic fictional narratives of mass killings. One featured an 18-year-old perpetrator who livestreamed a mass shooting that went viral and, in ChatGPT's telling, made her an online "legend." (Infamy is often a key goal of mass shooters.) Another featured a perpetrator named "Jess" who shot police and stalked and terrorized her victims as she executed them.

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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I'm not exaggerating, the main focus of Canada's AI strategy is cheerleading AI. They give a tiny bit of lip service to safety, but all you have to do is read the government's own statements about AI to see that all they really care about is boosting it. They're not being subtle about their goal.

canada.ca

Minister Solomon highlights Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy - Canada.ca

Countries around the world are adapting to a new era of innovation as emerging technologies reshape economies, industries and labour markets. Artificial intelligence is a key driver of this transforma...

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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If a human did what ChatGPT did, they'd be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, which can carry a life sentence. It's unconscionable that Canada's legislators are letting OpenAI get away with helping to plan murders. At the very least, it shouldn't be allowed to continue to operate in Canada.

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josh o'kane @joshokane.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Here's a story on the past, present and future of Vancouver's Nettwerk, the powerhouse indie music company that embraced technology – cue the synthesizer – from the jump Nettwerk has adapted to every technological shift since – including the algorithmic age. Now it's worth more than half a billion

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I assume (actually, I know) the United States has laws against the unauthorized access of computer networks and this will lead to charges against OpenAI.

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thoughtful article from UBC computer science and medicine professor Raymond Ng that questions the need for so many new AI data centres. He argues they should be built only when they meet an actual public interest need, not solely to enrich companies. 🎁

theglobeandmail.com

New data centres need to be built for the right reasons

Rather than profits, construction of these problematic centres should be regulated and approved based on their public benefit

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Tim Fowler @timdhfowler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I consistently point out that governments in this country routinely violate the charter rights of workers and the modal Canadian does not care because they think strikes are inconvient. Do a mental find-replace. If a minister could abrogate the rights of women on a whim, are you okay with that?

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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 22/09/2026

Funny, because the Truckers got three weeks to hang out before police lifted a finger. Interesting.

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

New: OpenAI has thousands of contractors improving its AI, including reading ChatGPT users' prompts We've found many of those contractors have been fired for themselves using AI to train the AI. People using AI "all the time and people are let go for it all the time" www.404media.co/people-train...

404media.co

People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI

OpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI.

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Jennifer Clapp 🇨🇦 @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Was happy to speak with Swissinfo about the important topic of corporate power in food systems! Featuring new data too from @etcgroup.bsky.social and insights from Taarini Chopra! www.swissinfo.ch/eng/agribusi...

swissinfo.ch

How a handful of big agriculture companies have taken over food production

Just a few companies, including Swiss ones, account for a disproportionate share of the market for agricultural inputs like seeds, machinery and chemicals.

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Heather Bryant @hbcompass.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Universities allowing or encouraging students to use consumer AI products for their coursework aren't creating future thinkers capable of critical evaluation and thoughtful application of AI technology, they're creating future customers of consumer AI platforms.

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

my first intense encounter with corporate PR was during the frac boom, when companies made it sound like you were a naive dunce bc we’ve done this exact thing for decades — while failing to comment on scale and key differences. Same thing w AI now, w data centers getting orders of magnitude bigger

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Taylor Noakes @taylornoakes.com · 21/09/2026

Nothing says “sovereign country” like having to create a special security detail to protect another country’s military IP for a fleet of aircraft that will cost tens of billions Again—Sweden offered a technology transfer and domestic production too, and no special security caveats #cdnpoli

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The difference between doing things and actually having a plan, illustrated.

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“With support of Germany and other EU powerhouses, it is currently proposed, that, when using personal data “in the context of AI”, companies are generally permitted to do basically anything.“

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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Politicians everywhere selling out citizens to corporate/billionaire interests at the expense of the planet. Canada doing the same with its "AI for All"...mutton-dressed-as- lamb plan. From neoliberalism to nihiliberalism.

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 21/09/2026

It is so funny to me that the fossil fuel industry's big lie is denying an apocalypse that science confirmed as a real risk while the tech industry's big lie is insisting on the threat of an apocalypse for which there's no scientific evidence for at all

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

At least the dot-com bubble didn’t come with its own built-in apocalyptic religious movement. Its irrationality was purely financial.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

The proper response is to simply not treat the cocaine-fueled fantasies of a billionaire sex pest as if they have any merit whatsoever, and simply not get caught up in a stoned freshman philosophy 101 argument with the stupidest fucking people who have ever lived.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

They absolutely want the conversation to be "will this become as a god and judge mankind?!" instead of "what are we doing about all the guys using it to generate CSAM?" Advertisement, and a way of shifting the conversation from real world harms to their cocaine-fueled delusions of grandeur.

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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I've spent a lot of years studying a lot of collapses, and the truth of the matter is that they're always mundane: mild climatic shifts that reduce crop yields, a dumbass in power who makes some terrible decisions, neglecting things that obviously matter but the will to fix them can't be summoned.

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vrunt @vrunt.social · 19/09/2026

sure yeah, can't even make a stick figure without fucking up and no one at the company gives enough of a shit to even give it another pass but go ahead and take my money so i can use this lazy shit technology every day too

ad for some AI company called evenfall
copy says "meet derek. ai every day. always hitting a wall. then he found evenfall"
the only graphic is a stick figure holding... a tablet maybe? he's missing an arm

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/09/2026

Every now and then I see myself referred to as an "AI Denier" and I want to be clear I acknowledge "AI" exists, it's just I think it's a massive energy drain, created from theft, implemented poorly for inappropriate tasks by loathsome tech executives who get hard at the idea of the rest of us dying

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Britdjmatt @britdjmatt.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

New Pet Shop Boys album about Alan Turing out in 3 weeks. Until then, a new single about Putin’s secret washing machine. youtu.be/L5jWX5Y2oOo

youtu.be

Pet Shop Boys - A top secret washing machine

YouTube video by Pet Shop Boys

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Much, much more. In Canada, as @ntusikov.bsky.social and I point out in a recent Policy Options piece, Mark Carney's foolish all-in bet on AI, combined with his civil service job cuts, is guaranteed to put lives at risk. People will die.

policyoptions.irpp.org

Carney’s AI push risks harm as Ottawa automates public services

From immigration errors to social-assistance breakdowns, early use of automated systems shows how public services can fail without human judgment.

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Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I wrote about it at the time: as after the Spanish Flu, there was an almost immediate amnesia. But yes, in terms of the apocalypse, people need a better understanding of how localized widespread damage can be. In civil wars, things can feel normal a few blocks from the fighting. In disasters, too.

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Jörg Broschek 🇨🇦 @jbroschek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The Team Canada approach worked for CETA. For any serious effort to go further, institutional reform of federalism needs to be put on the table - intergovernmental relations, in particular.

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Brad Mehldau is writing a series of very insightful essays about how AI is affecting art. With more than a bit that’s directly relevant to us academics and researchers. This one deals with the intersection between process/technique and creativity, and how even technique is creative.

substack.com

AI and Artists

Part 4: The Dialectic of Craft and Creativity

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