Canada excluded from Google's expansion of AI chatbot Bard

The Bard exclusion isn’t due to the news thing; it’s due to Canada having privacy laws and a privacy watchdog that actually pays attention. If Google expanded to Canada, they’d have to answer a bunch of questions it appears they’d rather avoid.

I was under the impression that the EU has pretty strict privacy laws and oversight. Is Canada stricter?
- No. Canada might have different laws, but they are no more stringent than the EU or California. Surely there is differing regulations, and might be the market size that had it dropped in priority.
- Not strict enough. Should be better we need a GDPR
It's true there are definitely privacy issues with it (esp. where future overlap with Google Docs would be concerned), but their reasoning in the article was "regulatory uncertainty." At the very least, Alphabet & Google want people to think C-18 is the reason.
Why do we have bing chatgpt4 then?
The Canadian privacy watchdog does things? I doubt bard is any more data invasive than meta platforms and they get a pass..
- A lot of people seem to have misunderstood what I said.
  The Canadian watchdog asks questions Google likely doesn’t want asked.
  It’s not about penalties, it’s about asking questions that others might then also ask.

Man, whatever. Fuck big corporations anyway.

Google "do no evil" my ass. Lately I've become very tired of all these tech companies who think they control the internet. That's not how internet works. I think they forgot how it really works.

And this AI shit? It's kind of disappointing. And the reason for that is because of how corporations are trying to exploit it to maximise their profits just like everything/everybody else.

Technology in general, including AI, was supposed to make our lives easier. Make us need to work less to produce just as much or more. The goal was to have a utopia where nobody would have to work anymore and technology would take care of everything for us. But NOOOOOOO. We're still working harder than ever just trying to get by, and if we can be replace by technology, then too fucking bad. You end up poor, homeless and you're told by the same wealthy people who fired you and who are benefiting from technology to "pick yourself up by your bootstraps".

Finally some privacy laws working in our favor.

As someone who has had to actively contact an AI company and expressly deny use of digital images on our website, I'm confident there are no boundaries with what they scrape from the Internet. They don't have any respect and slurp up everything in their path, which unfortunately leads to only one possible outcome - a culturally desensitised dataset. It will become the 'neutral average' of the internet, banal in many ways and biased in others. Don't expect anything that resembles Canadian sentiment to come out of any non-Canadian AI (Same problem but different locale for me - UK/Eire).

Any that's before it starts eating it's own tail - there's pictures of generative images where they fed data back in, and it's as interesting as it is amusing and horrific. Keeping the data clean is an unsolved problem because it's hard to differentiate organic and synthetic sources.

All of this pales into insignificance with (as far as I know) all AI lacking the ability to admit when it doesn't know. It just makes it up from nothing.

I have access to ChatGPT, Bard, etc. I haven't found a use for any of it yet (software engineering) where I trust it enough and the experiments I've run have proved this, for me personally. It's a novelty, a toy, it will evolve. As for the Online News Act, I'm conflicted. I believe in a free and open Internet, which goes against both restrictive legislation and against the likes of Google and Meta who abuse their position in the online landscape. My instinct is I'd rather have the Online News Act than Bard as the publisher should own their content, so good luck with that.

This! I see the hype around AI and it's like everyone has lost their mind. You wouldn't accept a statistical study without sampling info (dataset size, origin, selection, filtering, bias, reproductibility, etc). Why would we not ask the same with LLM or generative AI? It's like everyone got so excited about models built on large datasets that they forgot we already had procedures for handling data.
- its a tool. like a wrench. Use it as its meant to be used, it works great. Unfortunately, it is possible to use a wrench to pound in a screw.

Don't care. Google is also being a baby and blocking Canadians from Canadian news.

Perhaps we should all move away from Google? They clearly can't be trusted when their response to pay Canadian journalists for rehosting their content is "nah, we instead are going to block Canadian news".

I don't think it's unfair to pay someone when you're rehosting their stuff or driving away clicks by giving an article summary. Especially when there's no Google without links. Just like Reddit doesn't work without users submitting content. Not to mention it's bold to play this game when there are plenty of Google alternatives now.

If you want to move away from google there are plenty of people on fedi who can help.
- I switched to duck duck go a year ago and honestly I get my news quicker and more reliably from Lemmy, TikTok, and previously Reddit.
  It's actually scary how much I see from 50 different angles on TikTok before any news outlet even covers it, if even. Saw a stabbing in Toronto from multiple angles a few HOURS before I even seen an article about it.
  I know Lemmy hates TikTok, but can't deny it's great for being up to date ASAP when it comes to news. At least for right now.
"Reposting" as in linking to their content? Most other companies pay Google for that service.
How are those companies going to drive views to their site? Do you think Microsoft and Meta are going to play ball? They aren't. Do you expect Lemmy instances to pay whenever someone uploads a Canadian news article?
Our country is a literal South Park meme right now. We're just waiting on the bubble gum and Bennigans coupons.
This is borderline fascist legislation. Restricting the flow of information on the internet so that Canadians are forced to turn to traditional mainstream media for their news. It was never about money.
- This is borderline fascist legislation.
  No it's not. It's dumb, sure; but it's not fascism.
  What's your goal to preserve the 4th Estate?
- “Reposting” as in linking to their content? Most other companies pay Google for that service.
  Google has apps that rehost content instead of linking to it. Also, many people only view the headline or the brief description, driving views away completely.
  How are those companies going to drive views to their site? Do you think Microsoft and Meta are going to play ball? They aren’t. Do you expect Lemmy instances to pay whenever someone uploads a Canadian news article?
  Like I said, search engines rely on content to work. You can already request your website be removed from Google, and prevent it from ever being crawled again. Imagine if everyone did this, Google would literally be useless. Google needs content to work. Google shows ads in their search engine, so they are getting paid by simply linking to your website.
  Who said Meta and Microsoft wont play ball? Who said Lemmy is going to have to, is Lemmy a search engine? You're losing the point.
  Our country is a literal South Park meme right now. We’re just waiting on the bubble gum and Bennigans coupons.
  Ya, because people like you are okay with Google censoring and blocking news to Canadians for... some reason? Not sure why.
  This is borderline fascist legislation. Restricting the flow of information on the internet so that Canadians are forced to turn to traditional mainstream media for their news. It was never about money.
  Oh, there's the south park coming out. It's clear you've never created content online. What Google is doing is wrong, and Canadian journalists aren't wrong for wanting to be paid for views that are taken away. It's quite literally Google that is restricting the flow of information, so not sure why you're blaming Canada.
  All Google needs to do is pay pennies per click, just like they do with everything else. They are being a greedy American company who will slowly learn that they can't treat the rest of the world like they do Americans. Look how great Google is. https://youtu.be/cA_cJAFF8Ss

Oh dear. A megacorporation who is noted for not following rules or respecting boundaries is going to lock Canada out.

How can we help all countries match this feat?

Why would anyone give a shit whether Canada gets included in Google’s ai? They just foist this new shit that is effectively useless to the average person other than making shitty “art” and cheating on essay writing. They use it however they want while skirting copyright laws and trawling any data they can get their hands on.

Does anybody really think that ai under google is doing anything other than data-mining to sell advertising? Ai in it’s current form isn’t helping anyone except corporations and the billionaire class and almost everyone would be better off without it.

Not to rain on that parade, but there are some pretty inovative companies using AI for the betterment of society as a whole. What we all hear and see in the media is really stupid corporate types of AI use, which ultimately will fail because AI lacks one thing we all possess, and that is feeling. AI lacks the ability to insightfully mix in feeling to convey the output.
Where it's great is where it's all used for calculations similar to how super computers were used.
- Raw calculations are not AI. The whole premise is that it will be able to understand/emulate human emotion. Else it's just like the algorithms we've been developing since who knows how long.

That sounds like a good thing.

Canada has long been excluded from a lot of newly releases products from a lot of American companies.

Most of the time it's like they simply forget we exist. Or they don't want to comply with our stronger consumer protection regulations, or labelling laws or anything else.

Even though this may be part of their whining about the latest law, it could also just be part of that long pattern.

I see no problem with this.

No loss for me. I don't give a rat's ass about AI chatbots. And I myself have excluded Google from my online activities. I use Debian Linux. My phone has LineageOS without Google Play Services -- instead I use apps from f-droid, including OsmAnd~ for mapping. I never use Google search (I rely on DuckDuckGo). Any YouTube videos I may wish to view I use either FreeTube or Invidious (the latter via the Firefox addon LibRedirect). For translation, it's LibreTranslate. If I wish to see news articles I'll go directly to media sites such as The Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC, or via the news search on DuckDuckGo. Anyone who is still allowing themselves to be a product of Google is misguided, as far as I'm concerned.

Barred from Bard!

Lucky them.