Federal government used AI in hundreds of initiatives, new research database shows
Canada’s federal government has used artificial intelligence in nearly 300 projects and initiatives, new research has found - including to help predict the outcome of tax cases, sort temporary visa applications and promote diversity in hiring.
Joanna Redden, an associate professor at Western University, pieced together the database using news reports, documents tabled in Parliament and access-to-information requests.
Of the 303 automated tools in the register as of Wednesday, 95 per cent were used by federal government agencies.
“There needs to be far more public debate about what kinds of systems should be in use, and there needs to be more public information available about how these systems are being used,” Redden said in an interview.
She argued the data exposes a problem with the Liberal government’s proposed Artificial Intelligence and
Data Act, the first federal bill specifically aimed at AI.
“That piece of legislation is not going to apply to, for the most part, government uses of AI. So the sheer number of applications that we’ve identified demonstrates what a problem that is.”
Bill C-27 would introduce new obligations for “high-impact” systems, such as the use of AI in employment. That’s something the Department of National Defense experimented with when it used AI to reduce bias in hiring decisions, in a program that ended in March 2021.
A spokesperson said the department used one platform to shortlist candidates to interview, and another to assess an “individual’s personality, cognitive ability and social acumen” and to match them to profiles. The candidates provided explicit consent, and the data informed human decisionmaking.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said two pilot projects from 2018 to help officers triage temporary resident visa applications have become permanent. The department uses “artificial intelligence tools to sort applications and determine positive eligibility.”
The register also says the department employs AI to review study permit applications by people from other countries, though a spokesperson said it does not use AI for “final decisionmaking.”
The department’s automated systems can’t reject an application or recommend a rejection, the spokesperson said.
Not all experiments become permanent initiatives.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said it discontinued a project analyzing publicly available social-media information to look for warning signs of suicide, due to factors including cost and “methodologies.”
Health Canada, on the other hand, continues to use a social listening tool with a “rudimentary AI component” to search online news for mentions of incidents related to a consumer product, a spokesperson said.
Some of the experiments would be familiar to Canadians - the Royal Canadian Navy, for example, tried out a system similar to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa to verbally relay commands to ships.
A spokesperson said efforts to integrate voice-activated technology in warships continue, but “information security concerns” have to be “considered before such technology could be used.”
AI is also put to work for legal research and predictions.
The Canada Revenue Agency said it uses a system that allows users to input variables related to a case that will “provide an anticipated outcome by using analytics to predict how a court would likely rule in a specific scenario, based on relevance and historical court decisions.”
And the Canadian Institutes of Health Research uses labour relations decisions software. It compares a specific situation to previous cases and simulates how different facts might affect the outcome, the register outlines.
At the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, AI flags anomalies in estate filings.
A spokesperson said the system detects “potential debtor noncompliance based on key attributes found in insolvency filings.” Cases flagged by the system are evaluated by analysts.
The register also includes examples of AI being employed by the RCMP. A spokesperson confirmed the RCMP has used AI to identify child sexual assault material and to help in rescuing victims.
A “type of facial recognition technology called face matching” has been used on lawfully obtained internal data, the spokesperson said.
Facial recognition is also used by the Canada Border Services Agency. A spokesperson said the agency uses the technology on a voluntary basis to “help authenticate the identities of incoming travellers” though kiosks at some airports.
Redden said there are a lot of reasons to ask questions about facial recognition, including examples in the United States where it has led to wrongful arrests.
More broadly, she argued that the government should be keeping better track of its own uses of AI.
The federal government said that in cases where AI use “can have significant impacts,” such as in helping make administrative decisions, its directive on automated decision-making requires an algorithmic impact assessment.
Those assessments are then published in a public register, the Treasury Board outlined in an email.
The register currently only has 18 entries.
Asked why the number is so much smaller than Redden’s total, a spokesperson said the directive and the register are “specifically focused on uses of AI with direct impact on individuals or businesses.