‘Black, beautiful energy’: Legacy Awards salute Bailey, Offishall, future Black stars

TORONTO – Ask Meta Platforms Inc.’s head of artificial intelligence research how the technology could be made safer and she takes inspiration from an unlikely place: the grocery store.

Supermarkets are filled with products that offer key information at a glance, Joelle Pineau says.

“That list of ingredients allows people to make informed choices about whether they want to eat that food or not,” explains Pineau, who is due to speak at the Elevate tech conference in Toronto this week.

“But right now, in AI, we seem to have a rather paternalistic approach to (transparency), which is let us decide what is the regulation or what everyone should or shouldn’t do, rather than have something that empowers people to make choices.”

Pineau’s reflections on the state of AI come as the globe is awash in chatter about the future of the technology and whether it will cause unemployment, bias and discrimination and even existential risks for humanity.

Governments are working to assess many of these problems as they edge toward AI-specific legislation, which in Canada won’t come into effect until at least next year.

Tech companies are keen to be involved in shaping AI guardrails, arguing that any regulations could help protect their users and keeps competitors on an even playing field. Still, they are wary regulation could limit the pace, progress and plans they’ve made with AI.

Whatever form AI guardrails take on, Pineau wants transparency to be a priority, and she already has an idea about how to make that happen.

She says legislation could require creators to document what information they used to build and develop AI models, their capabilities and, perhaps, some of the results from their risk assessments.

“I don’t yet have a very prescriptive point of view of what should or shouldn’t be documented, but I do think that is kind of the first step,” she says.

Many companies in the AI space are doing this work already but “they’re not being transparent about it,” she adds.

Research suggests there is plenty of room for improvement.

Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred AI analyzed how transparent prominent AI models were in May by using 100 indicators including whether companies made use of personal information, disclosed licenses they have for data and took steps to omit copyrighted materials.

The researchers found many models were far from acing the test. Meta’s Llama 2 landed a 60 per cent score, Anthropic’s Claude 3 got 51 per cent, GPT-4 from OpenAI sat at 49 per cent and Google’s Gemini 1.0 Ultra reached 47 per cent.

Pineau, who doubles as a computer science professor at McGill University in Montreal, has similarly found “the culture of transparency is a very different one from one company to the next.”

At Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, there has been a commitment to open-source AI models, which typically allow anyone to access, use, modify, and distribute them.

Meta, however, also has an AI search and assistant tool it has rolled out to Facebook and Instagram that it does not let users opt out of.

In contrast, some companies let users opt out of such products or have adopted even more transparency features, but there are plenty who have taken a more lax approach or rebuffed attempts to encourage them to make their models open-source.

A more standardized and transparent approach used by all companies would have two key benefits, Pineau said.

It would build trust and force companies “to do the right work” because they know their actions are going to be scrutinized.

“It’s very clear this work is going out there and it’s got to be good, so there’s a strong incentive to do high-quality work,” she said.

“The other thing is if we are that transparent and we get something wrong — and it happens — we’re going to learn very quickly and often … before it gets into (a) product, so it’s also a much faster cycle in terms of discovering where we need to do better.”

While the average person might not feel excited by the kinds of data she imagines organizations being transparent with, Pineau said it would come in handy for governments, companies and startups trying to use AI.

“Those people are going to have a responsibility for how they use AI and they should have that transparency as they bring it into their own workforce,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

TORONTO – Britpop giants Oasis have added Toronto to its reunion tour.

The band kicks off the North American leg of their world tour at Rogers Stadium on Aug. 24, 2025.

It’s the first show officially scheduled for the open-air venue after its construction was announced last week.

Liam and Noel Gallagher also announced shows in Chicago, East Rutherford, N.J., Los Angeles and Mexico City, with U.S. rock band Cage the Elephant opening all dates.

The “Wonderwall” hitmakers sold out their entire U.K. and Ireland tour almost immediately.

Presale registration is open on the band’s website until 8 a.m. ET on Tuesday, with general ticket sales beginning at noon local time on Friday.

The performance will be Oasis’s first visit to Toronto since appearing at now-defunct V-Festival in July 2008, when Noel was pushed over by a fan who rushed onto the stage.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

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A benefit concert and the construction of 30 new homes are among the many events marking President Jimmy Carter ‘s 100th birthday on Oct. 1. Considering the former president’s long legacy as a philanthropist, it’s no surprise that he wants any gift-giving to go to other people.

The star-studded concert at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre earlier in September raised money to support the international programs of The Carter Center, which Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 with the mission to “ wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.” The concert airs on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, thousands of Habitat for Humanity volunteers gathered Monday to build 30 homes in St. Paul, Minnesota, over five days, led by country music giants Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who worked alongside the Carters for years, beginning with projects in Hurricane Katrina’s disaster area.

The Carters’ relationship with Habitat for Humanity stretches back 40 years, to when the couple went to New York City on a build in 1984.

“The image of a president of the United States sleeping in a church basement and physically helping rehab a tenement building captured the world,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. The Carters went on to build homes annually for 35 years. Carter repeatedly said that working with the organization was a way he put his Christian faith into action, Reckford recalled.

Cleora Taylor, a medical assistant, met the Carters in August 2018 when they helped build 41 new homes in South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana.

Years later, Taylor recalled how the former president greeted her by name and knew about her children, including her daughter, who was 11 at the time and has autism.

“It means so much to me that he knew me,” said Taylor, speaking from her living room in the home The Carters helped her build, on a street named Carter Court. “He’s just such a good, welcoming, humble guy. I’m just glad to be a part of a legacy that he’s leaving behind.”

Presidential historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander, professor of Virginia Black history and culture at Norfolk State University, said the strength of Carter’s legacy is in his morality. Unlike many who claim to care about the disadvantaged, Carter has shown that they — and not power or money — are his main concern, Newby-Alexander said.

“I think he has probably done more personally in his post-presidency than anyone else because he’s not out there looking for attention,” she said. “He’s looking to change things. He’s not out there trying to make money for himself. He’s out there trying to live the life of a Christian — a true Christian, one who cares about the poor and the homeless and the children.”

While leadership in philanthropy is often gauged by the size of donations or the heft of assets under management, Carter’s giving came in the form of his seemingly ceaseless personal effort. From building homes to monitoring elections and pursuing the elimination of a painful but neglected disease, Carter used his stature and presence to rally resources and attention to his causes.

“In so many ways, he set the standard for how presidents should be in their post-presidency, as someone who is going to continue to do good, someone who’s going to continue to positively impact society,” Newby-Alexander said.

Carter’s legacy of giving back also includes working to eradicate Guinea worm, a commitment The Carter Center has made since 1986. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified the disease as a candidate for eradication after smallpox. Carter took up the mantle, vowing to outlive the last such parasite.

“To the demise of the worm” is the catchphrase, according to Dr. Jordan Tappero, deputy director for neglected tropical diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given $263 million to The Carter Center since 2000, mostly to support its work on Guinea worm.

The number of cases has fallen from 3.5 million when the center started to only 13 known cases in humans in 2022, and now focuses on closing the “last mile” of infections in several African countries. Even after Carter entered hospice in February 2023, Tappero said, Carter was still contacting his team.

“He still wants updates and wants to know what’s going on because his mind will never stop until the last heartbeat,” Tappero said, speaking in March 2023.

Carter engaged directly with health ministries and heads of state to muster their commitment to public health interventions, said Steven M. Hilton of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Since 1991, the foundation said it has committed nearly $50 million to The Carter Center for eradicating Guinea worm and to support its work treating and controlling trachoma, a disease that can cause irreversible blindness.

Hilton considers Carter to be “a remarkable man with a deeply compassionate heart.”

“I feel fortunate to have witnessed firsthand the strength of his character, including his dedication to seeing enormous humanitarian challenges through to the end,” Hilton said in a statement.

Tappero draws inspiration from the Carters’ humility, energy and dedication. “If we all had one-fifth of his energy, commitment and passion,” he said, “the world would be a much better place.”

Taylor, who lives near South Bend, Indiana, said she saw that commitment firsthand as Carter, 93 at the time, helped her put up a kitchen wall in her four-bedroom home.

“It was just so amazing that he still was out here, outside at that age, working with us,” she said. “It made us want to work harder.”

She still gets emotional thinking about that week, an incredible opportunity for her and her four kids.

“Not only did I get to meet Jimmy Carter and his wife and his children and hundreds of volunteers, other celebrities, I get to own a piece of the world. I get to own a piece of land,” she said.

“I never thought that I would be able to do something like that, being a single mother. And for them to have to put so much into it, the volunteers and for Jimmy Carter to actually be here? It was amazing for people to care like he cares.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.