Month: September 2025

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Rex v Artificial Intelligence

Silly question: what do we do when AI breaks the law?

Is it as simple as finding the human user who prompted it in a criminal direction? What if there is no discernible human cause? How does the legal system prepare for the possibility of criminal defendants who are not, by definition, human?

There are a few easy answers immediately. But once you peel back the onion, you discover those easy answers are just as easy to pick apart. Take, for example, a self-driving car. This car has one occupant, seated in the passenger seat. It is being controlled by an Artificial Intelligence model capable of performing complex calculations in space and time five thousand times faster than a human being. This AI model was created, trained, and employed by humans. But it is not human. It is more comparable to a service dog: capable, impressive, but still ultimately limited by the mysteries of cogitation and self-awareness. 

Now imagine the car suddenly hops the curb and plows into a schoolyard. 

The investigation reveals the cause to be related to an AI decision. For lack of a more profound analogy, let’s say that what should have been a one was interpreted as a zero. A ‘yes’ that was supposed to be a ‘no’. Computer error. A glitch. An accident of programming.

Who would stand trial? Who would the families of the victims face with their eyes full of justice, and hearts full of vengeance? Would it be the human occupant? The owner of the vehicle? The person who signed the safety certificate? The company that built the car? The company that created the AI? They all have one thing in common: someone else they can point to. The blame can travel around in circles and never find a home. 

Or do we start building closed-circuit prisons for rogue AI?

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Over-Consumption of Under-Cooked Content.

Do you still watch television?
Do you read a newspaper? A magazine? Does your information come from a physical source, or do you consume content in a digital buffet?

I imagine using the term anachronistically – even a single generation so. Tell someone in 2001 that they were consuming content and they would likely punch you for making a fat joke. Because prior to the social media explosion, the term content had a very different meaning.

The only reason I bring the point to light is to expose a fundamental difference in how we see entertainment in the modern day versus only a few years ago. Content was not consumed – it was was watched. Witnessed. Observed. Remembered. It gave what we saw a certain gravity of permanence. Because if someone paid to put it on television, or on the radio – or put it into print – there must be an importance to it. Who would waste money on shouting something that stupid?

Once it was free, however … every idiot could start shouting. And shout, we did (apologies to a few dozen hundred subreddits).

For the last two decades, anyone can say anything to everyone. Loudly. It has not been pleasant. But it has been enlightening. The modern influencer culture is based on an entirely ephemeral structure of digestive bits of content. They aren’t real. We know that. They aren’t experts. We know that,  too. But we watch them for eighteen to twenty-six seconds at a time, and we feel comforted by their refreshing take on something we had previously considered frivolous – or never considered at all. An easy little snack of an idea.

Don’t want to ruin your dinner, after all ….

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Nationalism: A Reflection

A line on a map. A river. A mountain range. An accident of birth, and another citizen is added to the populous ….

Is there still room for the idea of where makes whom? The world is small enough to fit comfortably in your pocket nowadays, so with the ability to see everyone, everywhere, everywhen, can it really be comfortable to believe that an accident defines the nature of a soul? A person?

I did not choose to be born Canadian. It was not a decision I had any involvement in. I do, however, decide to remain Canadian. That is a choice I make based on all the available resources and information in this modern age. The difference is that I can take pride in one event, but not in the inherent luck of the other.

It’s a die roll – and the dice are crooked. Statistically speaking, a soul will be born into a life bereft of luxury and comfort, still, in 2025. Taking pride in the accident of your birth location is like taking pride in being tall, or curly-haired – or some other attribute over which you had no control. Be proud of your skills, your decisions, your intelligence, the strength of your arm, the sharpness of your tongue – traits you built and developed with your own determination. Your own choice.

And if you think far enough around that corner, you just might find that the other accidentals become incidentals all on their own.