Indra Kubicek, CEO of Digital Moment

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Welcome to Eh I, a podcast about the future of artificial intelligence in Canadian education. I'm your host, Melissa Sariffodeen, co-founder of Canada Learning Code. And I'm Ryan Oliver, the chief executive officer of Ampere and Canada Learning Code. Okay, before we dive into this episode, we're going to do our tradition of one real, one AI, where we blend together the two and things we've seen in the last week.

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In this episode, we talk a lot about non-human relationships and of the psychological impact of AI on youth. And I know, Ryan, you've got a kind of interesting discovery in your work, so maybe I'll pass it over to you. Yeah. So, Aubrey, real work we've been doing in the last, couple months. This is we are recording here in mid-May.

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It's it's the start of a new fiscal year for all non-profits. And we started to look at, like, okay, what have we been fund? You know, we fundraised a lot this year. What have we raised the money to, to do this year? Obviously, as an organization, we teach digital skills. But every year what our funders priorities in terms of what we are teaching is different.

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This year, we are disproportionately funded this year to really focus on cybersecurity. And, and that has been an interesting discovery for us as an organization, as we kind of put up where our priorities need to be from a delivery standpoint because, we are moving from a spot of teaching skills around how to build something to skills that how to be safe with something.

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And, and often the way government looks at that is how to recognize fix, how to recognize. Kind of like when you're being fooled. But I think, like as we get into in this episode, the non-human relationship part of this is, is really, really important. You're seeing increasingly stories of people, developing AI psychosis, developing relationships with artificial intelligence and the, the, maybe sometimes positives often I think negatives of that.

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And our guest today, indirectly, talks a lot about that. And I think we get into it in a really neat way. But it is interesting for us as an organization as we look at what 2026, 2027 fiscal year is going to mean for Canada learning code and Ampere and and we're really going to start looking at how we can help young learners, especially kind of identify both the real and the artificial here.

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When it comes to relationships with, with humans as well as what actually is, you know, is it even possible to have a relationship within artificial intelligence that is ultimately feeding back a lot of what you are just saying to it? So there's very interesting discoveries late, and that's going to be an interesting year for us. As a result.

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All right. We're going to get to the guest. Our guest today is Indra Kubicek. Track, the CEO of Digital Moments, an organization formerly known as Kids Code Genius. This is an organization that Mel and I have both worked with on and off, for the last ten years. All three of our organizations were at the forefront of digital skills learning across this country.

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Indra is based out of Montreal. She was formerly in the UK as a part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and we want to talk to her specifically, to see where she's landing. In AI education, digital moment is taught over 1 million youth and 35,000 educators across Canada, and is pivoting from a primary focus on coding to addressing the complex realities of artificial intelligence and social innovation.

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Okay, so we are joined today by Indra Kubicek. Check, the CEO of Digital Moment, an organization based in Montreal that has been serving all of Canada with digital skills for quite a while now. Indra, tell us, tell us, how long have you been serving Canada with digital skills training? Great. Well, nice to be here. Nice to see you both.

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Of course. So digital Moment started in 2013. So we are about 13 years in, to, to when we fully sort of launched the organization was launched, primarily at the time, to service Canada. Well, starting in Montreal, we started Service Canada, with some funding from the federal government starting in 2018, in 2017.

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But the organization primarily, primarily was focused on coding and programing because way back when, for our younger listeners 13 years ago, you actually needed to know a thing or two about coding and programing to build a website, which was actually how I got involved in this entire thing prior to that. But, yeah, we've been around for a while.

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We're a national organization, as you said, really focused on ensuring that the next generation has the digital literacy skills. And primarily right now the artificial intelligence, skills, to thrive in this, in this new world, we're all, embracing, dealing with and living in. We've reached, over 35,000 educators across the country and a million youth. We hit our million youth, reach mark at the end of December.

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So we've been at it for a while. Congratulations. That's great. And you were founded as kids Code, Janessa. Exactly. Yeah. So, yes, for those of us, those of you who've been following for a while, we were originally kids coach. And as, as, Ryan mentioned, we started in Montreal, Quebec. So we are fully bilingual and a big part of the roots.

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And so we decided to, rebrand is digital moment. Moment, in 2021 and officially launched. I was on Matt. So now I'm calculating how old my son is. It was in 2022. Was really to kind of what I said, the original, sort of purpose and mandate and mission was around coding and programing. So kids code genius is a French word that many Anglophone Canadians cannot say or spell.

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So it caused some issues for us there. And we were really broadening beyond coding to the reality of really where we all are today with digital literacy. And I'm sure we'll get into that. And we also broaden our mandate from just kids. So we are serving older youth and young adults now. So we wanted to kind of encompass all of those changes.

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But the young generation and the future of work is, is really still part of the core of what we do as an organization. I just went through a name change I and and sort your advice on it and I yeah, it's a whole thing. Feel your pain with how hard it is to change an entire history. Oh, you just you yeah, you you you were the first actually, right?

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Yeah. That's great. Yeah. But less hours is less. Ladies to Canada, learning code was a little bit less dramatic than either of yours, so. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's always pros and cons to it. Right. But, I feel like now I can say a few years out, we are really. No. And it's digital moment but took some time.

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And then the thing I love about when people still say kids casualness is you're like, oh, you've been with us for a really long time. So that also like gives you a sense of how long those people have known your organization. But yeah, it has a lot and a lot of, little finicky complications to it. It probably still goes with the paperwork, I love it.

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What are things to you about Digital moment? Is that you all have been teaching. I like your OGs in this space in many ways. You know, I know you'll see you touched a little bit. But I think from a youth perspective, at least, far as I know, in this space in Canada, you I think we're one of the first that really were diving into that.

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I think, you know, maybe part of your proximity in Montreal and some of the great eye minds. But do you wanna maybe talk a bit about that journey and then sort of where you are now, the AI programs that you're running, how you're thinking about it, and then we can maybe dive in further from there. Absolutely. So yeah, I love it.

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I do think we were the OGs in this space and I would say completely by accident, like, really? For me, I moved to Montreal to really join, kids coziness at the time, at a very pivotal early stage moment when the organization got a large amount of funding to really scale and grow beyond servicing Montreal. I had been living and working in the UK at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a very big international, digital skills, literacy, charity for a few years came back to Canada because I care deeply about this issue and ensuring that Canada is really invest setting in our young people in this space.

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And I happened to be sitting in, a co-working space in Montreal. So if anyone's listening from Montreal, not my house is a startup space for startups. And there was an ad on a TV screen talking to entrepreneurs about, hey, do you want to come to this session on artificial intelligence and how you could maybe use it in your business?

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I don't even know if that's those were the exact words, but the reason I really got involved in digital literacy back in the UK was because I became an entrepreneur by accident and had no digital literacy skills, and at the time I was building a marketplace platform for healthy holidays, having no idea how to actually build that. And as I said in 2011, Mel knew how to do this, I think, but I did not.

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And so you need to know how to code a website. And that was really an, moment for me in my early 30s thinking, oh my gosh, I have three degrees. I have an international career, I'm working in a big multinational company, and I have all this work experience, and I just want to build this business, and I cannot get this website off the ground without either investment.

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A lot of other people, you know, sweat equity, etc. and I tried all all of that. And it was before even entrepreneurship was what it is today. So here I was then in 2018, in Norman House, and I thought, oh my God. Again, I feel like I know nothing about AI. This is super intimidating. Like, what is that?

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What are they talking about? So we went I went to the team and we and we talked about and definitely all agreed a very quickly that we were really interested in teaching this to kids and teaching it to teachers. But again, nobody was really doing this. Like, I don't really think there was anyone yet as Mel said, we were lucky enough to be in Montreal and we Mila had just launched and we were, reaching out and I found you go lower.

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Shell, who is, now the chief scientist who replaced Yoshua Bengio at Mila. He's, we reached out to him early on, said he would advise, get involved, had a few people on staff who had a bit of background around this, and we started going in and talking to teachers and young people, but it was really grassroots and trying to reach out to the community and figure out how to do this.

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So it's come a long way since then. I could never say I had any idea when I said, we should teach this to kids that I really, truly knew that I would be what it is today. So I'm not taking any credit for that at all. But. Wow. Yeah, it's it's been quite a journey for all of us.

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So what was I back then? Like right now we associate, I mean, the last two years associate AI with large language models. Right. Like that is AI teaching. It's how do we handle this? When it went to teachers, what were you teaching back then? What was I. So I think we were still trying to teach those fundamental concepts, but I think it wasn't really resonating with people because it wasn't a kitchen table issue or a thing that they could actually get their hands on.

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But we were trying to explain to them, you know, it learns, you train this data, it predicts the words. So, you know, it predicts when we're after the next. And we actually had and this person isn't in our team anymore. And so I don't want to explain exactly, kind of because we never got it off the ground, but we were actually trying to create our own tool of the predictive words to, to show people how it worked.

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I think rather, and we were still talking back then about like, bias and data and, and kind of critical thinking skills, but I would definitely say and actually ChatGPT dropped when I was on Mally, so I was probably the only person in October 2022 that wasn't paying attention to chatbot, because I was trying to learn how to take care of my six month old baby.

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But then I came back to work, and it was like, now everybody at least is starting to get it and imagine how far we've come even from then. So I think the great thing is that what we were doing was relevant and was important, but it wasn't knowing enough to people. But we were talking about chat bots and all these kind of things.

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Now it's just it's in our everyday lives and it's it's everywhere. We kind of look. And so the fundamentals, are just becoming more important. But I think a lot of what we were talking about was still similar at the time. Pretty cool. I like yeah, I like that and I, I mean, I feel like that's sort of a similar asked us to I guess, like maybe because you have that like does it before and after, it's like maybe a little bit too binary, but like you've got this from before now, like, is there anything that you think people are under overestimate about AI now compared to before?

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Like there are so many things that are, are are different and similar. So yeah, like, you know, you're going, yeah, I like my I was thinking, well, what do I want to say today? And I my I'm processing and changing my view on all of this, you know, in real time too. So, what had been really interested in recently?

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And I think that maybe as a society, we're underestimating is how young people are using AI compared to those those of us who all say are over 40 is a rough number, and who are using it as a better like Google search and maybe to help us like plan our work better and like get more efficient at things.

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And I think that it'd be interesting if people went and talked to their kids or younger people in their lives to learn more about what they're talking to. Chat bots about, because I think it's a lot more about their personal lives. I think they're getting into a lot more intimate conversations with AI. And we'll actually be launching, some videos, right?

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Directly talking to young people and not even us. I'm far too old. No young person would probably talk to me, but having some young folks, just talking about the the way that chat bots are being developed to be your friend, to be persuasive, to get you to want to continue talking to them, to empathize with you, to tell you you're right.

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And I think as a society, we don't yet know. And I'm not saying I'm the right person to to study this, but I'm sure and I know people are, but the psychological relationships that people are going to have with non human intelligence were only at the cost. And we're all going to be in those in some way, like we have young kids.

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Melanie, I know have kids at very similar age. I think the world they're going to grow up in is they're going to be interacting with non-human beings in a way that we really never would have thought was going to come this quickly. I would say. So that's kind of one of the things that I, I never really is I'm just sitting with it.

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Maybe I could be wrong, but I didn't quite realize how fast that change was going to happen and how much I do think we're underestimating the impact of that on young minds and, young people at a very influential stage in their growth and development. That's really interesting. What's, and I guess, I mean, we can wait for the videos, but I'm kind of curious, like what?

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What are you hearing from students outside of of, like, when it comes to academics and AI? What how our students in that and I'm also kind of I'm always curious how are students seeing the future job market? I have two teenagers and a baby and and obviously the baby has no opinions yet. He likes to just smash things that react, but, which maybe is that?

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Hi. Yes, that's about what's attribute is, but my teenagers are really they're really kind of polarized in their on their views of AI and their friends ability to. What are you hearing from students in terms of how they're seeing that and what that means for what the future work looks like? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So those are kind of the two things we're really looking at now is our kind of future, educational experiences, I would say, is one really trying to tap into supporting young people on the social side, but absolutely, obviously, one of the biggest sort of concerns is what the future of work is going to look like.

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And we all know there's a lot of hype and it's hard to even even from the the researchers of a think tanks. And I was at Mila, yesterday for a big AI policy day. And there's a lot of, obviously work being done around what jobs are going to be transformed, what jobs are going to be gone, where future jobs are going to be.

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And I, I think we're all still trying to navigate exactly what that's going to look like. And with, as you know, the technology gets better, etc. that's probably going to change from six months in the, you know, they're going to continue needing to be. So on top of the data. But I would say from what we've heard, through others, we know they've done more of the research and we're and we're planning some new AI learning labs around this topic.

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Is young people are very worried. They are very anxious. And so, you know, we're dealing with a situation where education moves very slowly and for all the reasons teachers are intimidated or don't feel confident or schools are worried, kids are going to cheat. And maybe we'll get into how we need to get away from that, maybe and not.

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And that can't be worse where we stay. But the reality is, whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, we all have to admit we we are here. This is happening. We cannot individually stop it. So how do you educate yourself for kind of the future of something that you're excited about, or maybe something you're worried about? And I would compare it to, you know, your teach your kids to swim, whether you think that's for fun reasons or you whether you think that's because you don't want to drown, whatever the reason you're going to, you know, this is now part of society.

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And and what we've been hearing is that there's a little bit more sort of pushback, maybe from the adults than the youth themselves who are like, no, we want to be talking about this. We want you to be educating us on this, and we want to learn. And then there's all of the kind of complications about maybe how to do that.

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Well, but the anxiety, particularly for, for your older youth, as you said, Ryan, like maybe your younger ones, you know, hopefully we'll have figured it out by them, but they're really the guinea pigs and the teenagers in their early 20s right now. And what I really want to make sure that the country and our government, ensures is that we don't make the same mistakes that we made with smartphones where we don't think this is that big a deal to give them this stuff, and not really invest in making sure they know how to use it.

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Well and how are critically thinking about what they're doing. And Wilson. Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like there's this tension between like, you know, I shaping youth before or us before we shape the AI, you know, like and the sort of like race almost that were in you talked a little bit. Right. And different ages are probably a different points of this.

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Right. The one like group that I know you all do a lot of work with 35,000 plus educators. Like, I'm curious what you're seeing there in terms of their mind shift and the role that they have in, like, both being shaped by technology but helping shape students perspective around technology. Like what are their what are you all hearing from teachers?

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Do you think there's any shifts they need to be making? Yeah. I mean, we talk a little bit about that work. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, there's a lot of kind of even within the teacher pool of people, there is a lot of kind of different views and opinions and stages. Folks are I think for sure.

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You know, there's a lot who are don't want to add another thing on top of what I already have to do. Teachers are overworked. They feel, you know, there's underinvestment maybe in the support systems around them. And, like, how are you going to ask them to do anything more already and to put this on them? And so the way we and I'm sure you all have thought about this, and I know you think about, it as well is like, how do we get it into the curriculum in a way that it's not an added layer on top of what they're already doing, but it's already integrated into the subjects they're teaching, which

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is actually the reality of how it's being integrated into the workforce. Because whether you're going in it to become a geologist and at the yeah day yesterday, I went to a great session on critical minerals and how AI is impacting, you know, that industry, but it's no matter what industry you're in. And I guess one of the the kind of comparisons that people make that I think it's it sits with me is this idea around energy.

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And like once you know, we had electricity and that now impacted every sort of industry and part of our lives. And so in different ways, how are we getting into subjects? So right now we'll be partnering with the Raspberry Pi Foundation on releasing some new content, that fits into different subjects. Maybe I'll save what those are for now, because I'm not sure I'm going to say, but we have some other ones already that are around biology, etc. and kind of getting into the subject matter.

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They're already learning. So that's helping with teachers who are afraid. I guess it's a layer on top of what they're already doing. Another area that I know teachers feel, and I think we all feel this now, is we have to be more efficient and more effective, and now we have to really make sure we're using this in ways that we're going to have, you know, time to do other things.

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And we're exploring like around how we're going to support with that because we're really about like founding concepts and understanding AI. Before you jump to just like this is a better tool than that for lesson planning or for marketing, we honestly haven't like focused as much on specifics around those kind of things. But we do hear that and we're exploring where we sit in in that space.

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And also, you know, there's different things already out there. But we have some enthusiast teachers. But I would say the large part of teachers, I think are still feeling this is daunting and it's not in the curriculum anywhere as well. So, you know, putting expectations on them to teach it without investment tools and reform to how they teach.

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I think is going to be difficult. And then the reality is, yeah, what we heard even yesterday, again, you know, a lot of teachers don't want to give homework anymore because what are you really doing that for? And so we all need to be thinking about like what is what is what? How do we assess people's learning now and what is the best way to serve them.

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Yeah, I guess like we want to serve our learners. And so there's also, you know, optimistic possibilities around personalized learning, I guess, and things like that. But we're hearing still a lot of I think anywhere from low fear. But I think that the, the feeling that like it's here and at some point we're all going to have to deal with it is is definitely more the reality than it was a few years ago.

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I personally love this move. Tons. No homework. But anyway, I'll save that for another podcast. Ditto. As a parent, it also becomes our home where I. Hi. Oh my gosh, I'm not there yet. But yeah, I hope that that can sell before I have to start doing homework again. But I think it's more yeah, more of the like just more of the like utility of it serving, you know, what the role did before anyway.

00;23;02;24 - 00;23;25;13
Right? I largely saw it disappear for my teenagers lives about four years ago I actually had that's that mindset was like roughly post-Covid. Right. Like that's I think really kind of kicked that. Not always. I'm curious. So as for as long as I've known both kids code Janessa now digital moment, you guys have always, really embraced the, the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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And you run a program now called the digital 2030 challenge. And I'm curious because, like, like how you kind of reconcile and what the conversation is like when you're talking about AI and sustainable development, because, you know, I think if you asked Sam Altman or equivalent, in fact, one of them has said it at this point is like, well, we're just going to develop AI good enough and then it'll solve climate change.

00;23;47;13 - 00;24;07;02
And that's kind of the the pass off of this is the future. But what how do you and, you know, you look at like you even highlight sustainable development. Number seven like affordable and clean energy, responsible consumption and production. Those pieces like how do you, how do you have a conversation about sustainable development goals when the conversation happening?

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In the rest of the world is, AI is going to kind of drain our lakes and burn our forests. Yeah. Very good question. Well, so that was also something like and I guess for me, on a personal level, I really hope that we can help build a generation of young people that don't just want to be in it for making tons of money off tech, and I don't know how much money one human being needs in their lifetime, but certainly some of our tech, you know, bro's, for lack of a better word, have more than enough, to have been reinvesting and solving some of these problems.

00;24;46;25 - 00;25;08;17
And what we're really trying to do is help people think about how is it, a tool to solve the SDGs as a framework. So in 2020, we set up a ten year commitment, and set this new program called digital 2030, which is essentially, an online activity that any young person actually, anywhere in the world can, participate in.

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We're looking at fun, new ways to engage young people. So we actually, ran some ads on TikTok, over the holidays, and we had 130 young people, 130,000 young people engage with that new challenge this year, of which, to your point, our topic was AI and sustainability and the and the energy consumption and how data centers work.

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So one of the things we're trying to highlight and raise the raise up to young people is there actually is energy consumption related to using AI and even adults. When you talk to people about this and a joke that, when I was at the last Raspberry Pi conference, the comedies he told his teenage son, like, every time you make that sort of funny character on ChatGPT and ask it to draw something for you, like it's actually taking energy to do that.

00;25;56;18 - 00;26;21;23
And I think we're all going to grapple with that. And of course, that's just a joke and a small example, but I don't think many young people and even when I'm talking to many adults who are not in our space, right, we're like a very small, I would say, high engaged audience with AI and what's going on. And when you break out of that, just go to like a dinner party or like an after school activity with your kids, parents, friends, parents, like they're like, whoa, whoa.

00;26;21;23 - 00;26;46;16
You're like, what are you talking about? They're not is engaged in understanding this energy consumption. So one thing we're trying to do is educate, that first learn about this and then we do need to make decisions as a society. And the more that people have power, to maybe decide where they're going to, which tools are going to use and which tools are going to not use.

00;26;46;19 - 00;27;11;26
But that power feels, vulnerable. I will say, but yeah, that's what we're working on. Right now. So that's our latest challenge was around exactly this topic of how all of this energy consumption and how we could move towards more clean, energy in the future. As I will say, like with the teenagers that I talked to about this, that's, that's I think one of the things so the most aware of is, is the energy.

00;27;12;02 - 00;27;29;29
So it's really interesting, really interesting to kind of kind of see how we, how we ultimately like, have that conversation and potentially see it not just as the tools just just solve it for us, but as potentially a tool that could lead towards it at this point is it's really about getting the awareness out there. And so that was the first time we tried that.

00;27;29;29 - 00;27;52;06
It wasn't only on that platform. But what we learned was that when they saw an ad from us that talked about AI and sustainability, they wanted to learn more, and we were completely blown away by how. And we have the stats of, you know, the ages and, you know, 90 something percent of people were under were in the youth category, older youth to like we're talking in their 20s.

00;27;52;08 - 00;28;19;15
We were blown away just by how many people wanted to, to kind of learn about that, but it was about the way that we displayed the ad in the style. And, you know, all that comes into it. And so we're learning, obviously other tech companies are our partners and our funders right now. And I think this is this is, a big conversation that requires industry, government and civil society to come around the table.

00;28;19;15 - 00;28;46;09
And we have to hold people accountable as civil society, whether it's government and, and or industry, I believe they all have to play a part in, investing and investing in organizations who are neutral, who, you know, aren't selling products, who aren't, you know, looking at this as customers or how many more people can we get on our platforms, as partners, we have just launched a national AI, Council for the Future of Work.

00;28;46;11 - 00;29;12;26
We have not we have chosen to not have industry specifically, directly on that council at the moment. So it's more industry association, folks. Mila representation, Amy representation, they're all coming as individuals are not coming as their organizations. To work with as a group. We're national group of people. So we have representation from BC, Alberta, Quebec and and Ontario for now, I know that's not every province and territory.

00;29;12;26 - 00;29;39;07
So we love to broaden. If you know anyone who wants to join, but it's also like, a start to start having a more national conversation about this. And we are talking about, what is what rule do we want to maybe play, have industry play and hold them a bit more accountable? And, you know, I know both of you, these are companies you've worked with and partners and funders and we're all kind of in this, this ecosystem.

00;29;39;09 - 00;29;59;05
You know, we're all players in an ecosystem and it and it and it does take, a lot of, kind of collaboration and, and holding each other accountable. But, you know, our youth are already engaging with platforms and tools that these companies are making. And so we have to kind of meet them where they are.

00;29;59;05 - 00;30;19;20
I think as well. If so this is great. If I, if I'm a teacher listening, even an individual like, what does engaging the digital moment look like if, if someone wants to access your challenges, your, your curriculum, they've put together, what is that look like? Yeah. So, if you're a teacher, we run free teacher trainings.

00;30;19;20 - 00;30;48;20
And so we do those. We can do them either in person or virtually. You can come to our website, check it out. Sometimes we have open sessions. We're moving a little bit more right now to kind of trying to do a little bit more in-person. Again. So if you have a school or a school board who's interested in having us either come visit in person if we have someone in your area, otherwise, absolutely everything we can do online and we're doing topics on for teacher training from obviously AI, but also cybersecurity, we do things with Micro Bits, etc..

00;30;48;22 - 00;31;15;05
We also have just built a toolkit that we'll be releasing for our Social Innovation Lab, which is a week long. I don't know, I say bootcamp accelerator over those terms aren't the terms anymore, but essentially like a week long deep dive, experiential learning for teens on how to think about entrepreneurship, social impact, and learning about the right digital literacy skills they need to be a business, build a business they want to build.

00;31;15;07 - 00;31;31;00
And we built a toolkit that teachers could use in their class. We've trained some teachers on it. It fits really well if you're in kind of like the now what I've heard in the Ontario curriculum in grade 11 and 12, you can actually take an entrepreneurship pathway or there's courses around that which didn't exist when I was young.

00;31;31;00 - 00;31;49;14
Hence that's why I was so frustrated. We've got that, we'll also be running a lab in Toronto with youth. So that's more for youth in the spring break. So if you're in Toronto and you're a young person between 14 and 17 and want to come to a weeklong lab on entrepreneurship and digital literacy, check us out.

00;31;49;16 - 00;32;11;14
And then the challenge itself that we talked about this AI and sustainability challenge, is on our website. And anyone can participate. So there's there's lots of ways, we will be running some AI learning labs that I mentioned at the beginning, which is a new trial pilot around. I use case adoption. And this will be with 15 to 25 year olds.

00;32;11;14 - 00;32;30;10
So we're trying something new. We're actually going to bring high school students and post-secondary to post-secondary aged folks. You don't have to be in university. In fact, we're really focused on the non-university students, technical vocational are just not in school at all and want to learn a little bit about AI. And so we'll have more information about it soon.

00;32;30;10 - 00;32;50;02
But we're hoping to do one in Vancouver, one in Ottawa and one in Toronto before the end of March. For those who know, we're working with the government on March, so I'm sure you both know why we're doing well for March. Well, that's when we have the funding. I love it so much. Okay, so you, like many years ago, predicted I was going to be a thing.

00;32;50;02 - 00;33;09;09
I'm just going to say so we are talking to our own crystal ball here. What do you think's happening in AI in the next five years? Oh my gosh guys now was saying we just have the scenario. We define it. I mean either the technology or society education like obviously you can tell however you want, but I'm kind of curious in your take just given that you you got it right.

00;33;09;14 - 00;33;30;13
What's known my money from India. Now it's the markets that honestly I you know I don't want to I'm like, oh, that was a total, total fluke. I guess now I this is only in the last month and I because I've been reading some things about it, I guess in more in kind of like pop culture news.

00;33;30;13 - 00;33;48;03
So I don't remember the person's name off the top of my head, but I know there was a young man in Quebec who is a bit into advocacy around mental health and, some folks on his family. It was written up in one of the French newspapers. I can't remember which one. Getting addicted to these AI chat bot tools.

00;33;48;03 - 00;34;14;25
And there's a term now, and I should have read it down with for being here about, like, psychosomatic versus yes versus. Yeah. Related to your relationship with AI. And you know, I know that when the version of ChatGPT changed and there were people who, again, like, I feel that we're underestimating what is really going on with people and the relationships they're having with these tools.

00;34;14;25 - 00;34;35;04
And I read a New York Times article over the holidays that wasn't so grim. So nothing, nothing, you know, to scare people too much. But, the amount of health advice we're asking chat bots and it makes sense when they're saying, you know, health systems are under constraint. We can't ever see a doctor. I'm in Quebec, I can't, even though there'll be another podcast to go see a doctor.

00;34;35;06 - 00;34;58;11
And the reality is people want answers. And so what are you going to do again? No answer was so. But you know, that there could be positives to that because when there isn't another option, but this kind of relationship and data and information where sharing, you know, it's going somewhere. To Sam Altman, as you mentioned, and people are going down pretty deep paths, I think from a societal level.

00;34;58;11 - 00;35;20;05
My, my feeling is we don't yet know enough about the impact, negative potential impacts that's going to have on, people, especially those whose, you know, cognitive processes and prefrontal cortex are still developing. And, you know, it, it's so long ago. But being a teenager is hard enough already. And now you're looking to this for advice. And what's it telling you?

00;35;20;07 - 00;35;54;20
I think parents need to look out for that. Jobs. My personal hope and why we're doing these labs is I think we're really underestimating. The underestimating the potential productivity of young Canadians, from all walks of life who are in more traditional, manufacturing and kind of use maybe industries that were at the high level university type jobs, and the opportunity for folks who are going that path that I think, if with a little investment, we could, we could see some, some real opportunity for people in those industries.

00;35;54;22 - 00;36;24;13
All right. We'll check back in five years. Yeah, exactly. And others think you can find me, and I'm hiding somewhere on a beach. Excellent. Thanks so much, Senator. Appreciate you doing this. And I'm going to see you both. Thank you. Okay. Eh I is a podcast from Ampere and Canada Learning Code, brought to you by Pinnguaq Foundation, hosted by Ryan Oliver and Melissa Sariffodeen. The show is produced by Zac Miller and edited by Zac Miller and Kyle Gordon.

00;36;24;15 - 00;36;33;15
If you want to support Eh I, please check out the Pinnguaq Foundation on Canada Helps and consider a donation. Thanks for listening.