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TORONTO – A new survey says a majority of software engineers and developers feel tight project deadlines can put safety at risk.

Seventy-five per cent of the 1,000 global workers who responded to the survey released Tuesday say pressure to deliver projects on time and on budget could be compromising critical aspects like safety.

The concern is even higher among engineers and developers in North America, with 77 per cent of those surveyed on the continent reporting the urgency of projects could be straining safety.

The study was conducted between July and September by research agency Coleman Parkes and commissioned by BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX division, which builds connected-car technology.

The results reflect a timeless tug of war engineers and developers grapple with as they balance the need to meet project deadlines with regulations and safety checks that can slow down the process.

Finding that balance is an issue that developers of even the simplest appliances face because of advancements in technology, said John Wall, a senior vice-president at BlackBerry and head of QNX.

“The software is getting more complicated and there is more software whether it’s in a vehicle, robotics, a toaster, you name it… so being able to patch vulnerabilities, to prevent bad actors from doing malicious acts is becoming more and more important,” he said.

The medical, industrial and automotive industries have standardized safety measures and anything they produce undergoes rigorous testing, but that work doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be carried out from the start and then at every step of the development process.

“What makes safety and security difficult is it’s an ongoing thing,” Wall said. “It’s not something where you’ve done it, and you are finished.”

The Waterloo, Ont.-based business found 90 per cent of its survey respondents reported that organizations are prioritizing safety.

However, when asked about why safety may not be a priority for their organization, 46 per cent of those surveyed answered cost pressures and 35 per cent said a lack of resources.

That doesn’t surprise Wall. Delays have become rampant in the development of tech, and in some cases, stand to push back the launch of vehicle lines by two years, he said.

“We have to make sure that people don’t compromise on safety and security to be able to get products out quicker,” he said.

“What we don’t want to see is people cutting corners and creating unsafe situations.”

The survey also took a peek at security breaches, which have hit major companies like London Drugs, Indigo Books & Music, Giant Tiger and Ticketmaster in recent years.

About 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents said they have encountered a security breach in their employer’s operating system. Those breaches resulted in major impacts for 27 per cent of respondents, moderate impacts for 42 per cent and minor impacts for 27 per cent.

“There are vulnerabilities all the time and this is what makes the job very difficult because when you ship the software, presumably the software has no security vulnerabilities, but things get discovered after the fact,” Wall said.

Security issues, he added, have really come to the forefront of the problems developers face, so “really without security, you have no safety.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.

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TORONTO – Amazon Web Services’ director of global artificial intelligence is encouraging Canada not to go it alone when it comes to regulating the technology.

Canada should settle on AI legislation that is “interoperable” with guardrails other countries will wind up using or many burgeoning companies could wind up having trouble, Nicole Foster warned Tuesday.

“A lot of our startups are wonderfully ambitious and have ambitions to be able to sell and do business around the world, but having bespoke, unique rules for Canada is going to be an extremely limiting factor,” Foster said during a talk at the Elevate tech conference in Toronto.

Canada is working on an Artificial Intelligence and Data Act that is meant to design how the country will design, develop and deploy the technology.

The legislation is still winding its way through the House of Commons and isn’t expected to come into effect until at least next year but is being watched intensely in the technology sector and beyond.

Many worry the legislation could curtail innovation and push companies to flee for other countries that are more hospitable toward AI, but most agree that the technology industry cannot be left to decide on its own guardrails.

They reason the sector needs some parameters to protect people from systems perpetuating bias, spreading misinformation and causing violence or harm.

With the European Union, Canada, the U.S. and several other countries all charting their own paths toward guardrails, some in the tech community have called for collaboration.

Foster says there’s some “really promising signs” it could come to fruition based on what she’s seen from the G7 countries.

“Everybody is saying the right things. Everybody thinks interoperability is important,” she said.

“But saying it’s important and doing it are two different things.”

Canada’s industry minister François-Philippe Champagne is largely responsible for whatever approach the country takes to AI.

Last summer, he told attendees at another tech conference in Toronto, Collision, that he feels Canada is “ahead of the curve” with its approach to artificial intelligence, beating even the European Union.

“Canada is likely to be the first country in the world to have a digital charter where we’re going to have a chapter on responsible AI because we want AI to happen here,” he said.

His government has said it would ban “reckless and malicious” AI use, establish oversight by a commissioner and the industry minister and impose financial penalties.

Whatever Canada settles on, Foster said it has to be “conscious of the cost of regulation” because asking companies to undergo evaluations to ensure their software is safe can often be time-consuming and much of that work is already being done.

She feels the best regulatory model will identify high-risk AI systems and ensure there are steps in place to mitigate any harms they could cause but won’t regulate things that shouldn’t be regulated.

Among the AI systems she thinks can go without regulation are “mundane” systems like those that get baggage to travellers at an airport faster.

“I think (it’s about) being focused on the risks that we need to address and then really kind of not getting in the way of really valuable technology that’s going to make our lives better,” Foster said.

In a separate panel, Adobe’s head of global AI strategy Emily McReynolds also mentioned that there’s a role for companies to play in the conversation around regulation, too.

Adobe, she said, has committed to not mining the web for data it uses in its AI systems and instead opted to license information. She positioned the move as one that brings transparency to the company’s work but also ensure it is “really respecting creators,” who tend to use the company’s software.

She said Adobe had chosen to take a proactive approach to issues like data and told other businesses “it’s really important to understand that building AI responsibly is not something that comes after.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 2, 2024.

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CALGARY – Market experts say the coming boom in artificial intelligence has the potential to spur large-scale investments in clean energy.

Much has been made of the negative impact AI could have on the climate, given the expected rapid rollout of energy-hungry data centres that will be needed.

The International Energy Agency says the world’s data centres consumed roughly 1.4 to 1.7 per cent of global electricity use in 2022, but projects data centre energy consumption will double by the end of 2026.

Ed Crooks, vice-chair for the Americas with international data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, said at a conference in Calgary in that the fastest way to meet AI’s growing electricity needs is to build new natural gas-fired power plants.

But he said that is extremely problematic given countries need to wean themselves off of natural gas usage in order to meet global climate targets.

Crooks says on the bright side, the electricity needs of AI could spur global tech giants to take a leading role in the energy transition. He pointed out tech companies are already investing in wind, solar, nuclear and geothermal and could become among the largest funders of clean electricity projects.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 2, 2024.

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