When it comes to global politics, the talk of late is about trade, yet the real focus ought to be on

jobs. After all, that’s what motivates politicians to focus on trade, the desire to create or protect
jobs.

The G7 meeting was supposed to have had a range of themes and areas to focus upon, but the
attention went to the disruptive US President and his exceptionalist and protectionist agenda.

As hosts, Canada wanted to focus on technology driven disruption, in particular employment,

hoping to get industrialized nations to address the future of work.

On the surface this is also what populists like Trump claim they’re after, bringing back jobs and
helping people work. Yet within this approach to the future of work lie different policy
approaches and priorities.

Canada in particular is playing with a paradox. On the one hand there is a desire to be a global
leader in the AI revolution, and yet on the other hand there is the need to mitigate any negative
impact of automation upon the workforce. Hence the desire to use this opportunity of hosting the
G7 to move forward the policy response and the prioritization of government resources.

While this particular theme of the G7 did not really get any attention, there was still work that
was done, progress made, and policy developed.

It does seem a bit naive to have hoped that the G7 meeting would have been anything other
than the farce that it was. Yet that didn’t stop Canada from trying to make the most of being the
host. A ministerial meeting focusing on the future of work was held in Montreal in May, and a
statement was issued at the G7 meeting on a common vision for the future of AI.

Between these two initiatives we can start to get a glimpse of what the Canadian government
regards as the appropriate policy response to both the future of work and the ongoing rise of AI.

At the heart of this policy initiative are the concepts of lifelong learning and diversity. The
government is rather clear that education is what will drive the future of work, and that the future
of the workforce has to feature an increasingly diverse population. Women, marginalized
communities, and young people have to successfully find work if the broader economy is to be
successful.

Therefore education has to be accessible, affordable, and provide a kind of on-ramp for people
to enter the workforce, or a means by which people can pivot and find new employment
opportunities. This means greater availability of continuing education and vocational training, as
well as workplace training and self-directed learning that can enable the rapid adoption and
distribution of knowledge.
However an assumption in this view of work is that it is almost entirely based on skills. As long
as people have access to skills and knowledge than employment and economic opportunity will
magically appear. The reality however is that who you know can often be as important as what
you know, not to mention being in the right place at the right time. While these are cliches, they
speak to how work and opportunities are tied to social networks, professional connections, and
geographic proximity.

This can be seen in the federal government’s superclusters initiative. The goal is to foster
greater regional collaboration between a diverse set of actors in a sector, whether educational
institutions, big business, small and medium sized enterprises, not-for-profits, and local
government. Manufacturing in Ontario, agriculture in the Prairies, big data in BC, AI and robotics
in Quebec, and oceans and fisheries in the Maritimes.

This approach to innovation is a clear example that location and social networks play an
essential role in creating and leveraging economic opportunities. Superclusters will further
consolidate capital and expertise to the areas in which these networks are based, reinforcing
the regional specialization and expertise.

Similarly when the government talks about diversity, they have a rather narrow view of what that
means. Diversity of ideas is cited as a prerequisite for innovation, however most workplaces are
rather intolerant of employees having divergent views from management, let alone active roles
in the governance of the organization or workplace as a whole.

While there was strong emphasis on the need for safe work environments and tools to address
violence and harassment, there’s no mention on how to flatten hierarchies and truly empower
workers in the digital age so that they can maximize their value and secure their employment.

The government acknowledges that the workplace is dynamic, that the job market is constantly
changing, and that there is an important role to be had in preparing people for future
opportunities. Yet what they seem to avoid acknowledging is how stressful this can be and how
difficult it is to keep up.

How much of this is empty rhetoric or to what extent is the government articulating a new role
for themselves in this emerging era?

At the end of the G7 ministerial meeting in Montreal in May the government announced they
would create 500 new paid work placements for post-secondary students in the AI sector. In
literally creating jobs their hope was to expand the industrial capacity within the country. These
placements are also designed to increase the number of women active in the industry.

After all, when it comes to the fledgling AI sector, available talent is a genuine issue. The
demand for data scientists, machine learning experts, and AI specialists far exceeds the supply,
and there’s an immediate need for educational institutions to serve this demand.
However this is not just an issue of education, but also immigration, hence Canada’s desire to
use international events to let the world know that such talent is welcome here.

The hope was that this G7 would focus heavily on AI, and feature a joint statement on the
subject. While said statement was agreed upon and released, it received little attention above
the larger threats of trade war.

Yet it is within this statement that we can start to understand what the Canadian government
sees as an appropriate policy framework response to the rise of AI.

In particular there’s the language of “human centric” AI that focuses on safeguarding privacy
while also generating public trust in the technology.

This is where the policy paradox that the Canadian government and other G7 countries face
becomes clear. Governments cannot embrace AI if they believe that it will disempower or put
their populations out of work. Rather in order to sell their policies that promote AI, they need
convince their constituents to trust their vision of the future, and even further, to trust AI itself.

In this respect the G7 statement on AI is a bit confusing. It talks about safeguarding privacy, but
also promotes the free flow of information and warns against “unjustified data localization
requirements”. It encourages the embrace of lifelong learning, but also calls for investment in
research and development that generates public trust in technology as well as initiatives to
promote trust in AI systems.

It is as if G7 governments are anticipating the need to build trust in algorithmic authority, so that
as decision making is automated, we should limit the ability to distrust or dissent from said
systems. Rather alarming given Virginia Eubank’s research in Automating Inequality.

Presently it is difficult to separate issues of the future of work from issues of income polarization.
People do not desire work, but rather rewarding and well paying work. Promoting STEM
education or teaching people to code is not necessarily going to lead to the kind of work that
makes for a prosperous and stable society.

The ongoing automation of the Toronto subway system is a good example of this. Automatic
Train Operation is currently being implemented and promises to increase the capacity of the
transit system by allowing more trains to operate concurrently.

On first glance this might appear as a reduction of work, as subway trains go from two
engineers to one, with their new role to monitor the train rather than operate it. However the
increased capacity means more people in the system, which results in more staff needed to
shepherd those transit users safely through overcrowded platforms. Overall this means more
employment, yet for each individual, the work involves far less skill, far less pay, and probably
far less fulfillment.
If anything G7 statements and events give the illusion that these governments are doing
something when in reality they’ve got little sense of what is necessary and even less ability to do
anything about it.

The Government of Canada will be hosting a multi-stakeholder conference on AI in the fall of

2018 and have created a working group to both organize this event and move forward on the
issues expressed in the G7 AI statement. At the very least this will give us a means of
measuring the government’s progress and their ability to respond to this evolving policy area.

Another recurring theme within the government’s rhetoric around AI, the future of work, and
innovation, is the need to collaborate and work together (hence the superclusters). The
assumption being that in a dynamic and technology driven marketplace, problems must be
addressed collectively, and solutions need to involve as diverse a set of inputs and participants
as possible.

However it is not at all clear as to whether the Canadian government is genuinely interested in
collaborating or considering diverse viewpoints. They’re great at “consultation theatre”, but
actual collaborative policy development still eludes them.

Take Global Affairs Canada’s YouTube channel which features dozens of videos from the G7
meeting as well as the events leading up to it, many of which have total views numbering in the
single digits. Why would you create such content without also distributing it or creating a means
by which they can be engaged? Is their hope that if they dump this stuff on YouTube it will
magically find an audience? How much effort is being spent creating this content in contrast to
how much effort should be spent engaging Canadians on these issues?

Certainly these issues are being debated actively, and there is a growing range of policy
solutions that are being proposed that are not currently reflected in the Canadian government’s
discussions.

For example The Roosevelt Institute just published a report called “Don’t Fear the Robots:
Automation Doesn’t Mean the End of Work” by Mark Paul. It offers a range of interesting policy
responses that include free education, work sharing, and revised Intellectual Property laws that
shorten the lengths of patents and copyright protection so as to encourage greater innovation.

Outside of government there is considerable debate and a wide range of policy options being
considered, yet little of it is reflected in government initiatives or discussions. It is easy for the
government to say they are imagining a new role for themselves in a turbulent era, it is another
thing entirely for them to actually embrace and take on that role.