NEWS
1. Province announces wage increase, plus benefits and pension package for early childhood educators
Yesterday, the provincial government announced changes to benefits and compensation for early childhood educators (ECEs) working in licenced facilities, Yvette d’Entremont reports.
The changes were announced by Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Becky Druhan. d’Entremont writes:
The provincially licensed and funded early learning and child care sector includes 3,000 ECEs and support staff working for more than 300 individual employers.
Beginning in 2024, the new comprehensive group benefits and pension plan for the sector comes with a $111 million price tag. Druhan said the province is funding $75.7 million, with the remaining $35.3 million provided by the federal government through the Canada-wide child care agreement.
As of Jan. 1, workers will have access to an employee and family assistance program. In May, employers will begin enrolling in group benefits and the pension plan, with full enrollment occurring by the end of 2024.
To say this is long overdue is an understatement. I wonder how many ECEs have left the sector because of poor pay and a lack of benefits.
Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia early childhood educators to get wage increases, new benefits, and pensions.”
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2. Healthcare solutions contest
“The Houston government is letting Nova Scotians judge the top 10 ideas submitted by health care workers to improve the system,” Jennifer Henderson reports:
These ideas aren’t reforms, but rather tweaks that reveal the challenges hospitals are facing. More than 2,200 ideas were submitted by front-line health care workers, and 50 of them won $1,000 after their names were chosen in a random draw earlier this month.
The criteria for the contest, called the Healthcare Improvement Challenge, was that the ideas must be easy to implement with little or no cost. Premier Tim Houston brought the idea back from a trip to Singapore where it had been tried. Online voting is now open and closes Jan. 8 at 11:59pm.
It’s an interesting mix of suggestions. To my untrained eye at least two of them involve potentially serious violations of confidentiality. Read Henderson’s story for the full shortlist of ideas.
Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotians can now vote for top ideas in health care challenge.”
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3. EAC ‘applauds’ federal government plan to phase out gas- and- diesel-powered vehicles
Under a policy announced by the federal government yesterday, sales of gas-powered vehicles will be phased out by 2035. The policy, called the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, also has targets for electric vehicle sales.
A release from the government lays out the numbers:
The Standard will ensure that Canada can achieve a national target of 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. Interim targets of at least 20 percent of all sales by 2026, and at least 60 percent by 2030, will channel supply to Canadian markets instead of going abroad, reducing customer wait times and making sure Canadians have access to the latest affordable and technologically advanced vehicles that are coming to the market in the next few years. The Electric Vehicle Availability Standard helps Canada keep pace with the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and several other major economies which are all taking action to lower emissions and put more electric vehicles on the roads.
Interestingly, when Britain recently announced it was phasing out sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2035, that was seen as a step backwards. That’s because the U.K. had previously set a target of 2030.
As Reuters reported on September 25:
Announced in 2020, the 2030 ban was touted by then prime minister Boris Johnson, with whom [Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak has clashed, as a way to establish British global EV leadership. The UK goal was ahead of the 2035 ban in the European Union, where most British-made cars are sold.
“We should have been at 2035 from day one, but it moved because it’s become part of a political debate,” said Philip Nothard, UK insight and strategy director at car dealer services company Cox Automotive. “The timing sends the message that things can change again, making it difficult for companies to manage their investment strategies.”
Nevertheless, the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre said in a release yesterday that it “applauds the federal government” for its announcement of the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard. The EAC says the standard should help cut the number of new SUVs on the road:
While more Atlantic Canadians consider making the switch to EVs, the supply has been low because, for manufacturers, trucks and SUVs have substantially higher profit margins than EVs. This helps explain why, on average, the cars we drive in Canada have the highest fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions per kilometer in the world.
Automakers have historically compensated for lower profit margins on EVs by selling a limited number of luxury EVs. The new availability standard will force automakers to sell more affordable vehicle models.
Of course, having more electrical vehicles doesn’t make sense unless you’ve got fast chargers for them. (Ask my friend Mike about his recent experience driving a Nissan Leaf in Florida.) But, the EAC points out, knowing there will be more electric cars on the market will juice charger infrastructure:
While the presence of EV charging infrastructure is critical to adoption, certainty about EV adoption resulting from availability standards helps provide a business case for infrastructure investment. Private investors and utilities – both crucial to building robust charging networks – need a guaranteed and predictable supply of EVs to ensure that enough cars will be on the road to provide a return on charging infrastructure investment. Indeed, an EAC report released this year revealed that British Columbia – where an EV availability standard is in place – has more than four times as many fast-charging stations per vehicle than Nova Scotia, where an EV availability standard has been passed into legislation but not implemented.
Interestingly, in the case of the U.K. moving back its adoption date (again, to the same date we have just announced), car manufacturers and investors were among those who complained most loudly. They like certainty.
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4. New protected area announced
The provincial government announced a new protected wilderness area yesterday. The province has a legislated target of protecting 20% of Nova Scotia’s land and water by 2030.
The new Lake Wilderness Area protects 3,937 hectares of land, wetlands and water in the St. Margaret’s Bay area.
In a media release, the province says:
The Island Lake Wilderness Area includes old-growth and conifer forest, lakes, wetlands and watercourses, including part of the lower Ingram River. It also includes the scenic Island Lake, a large lake with islands that is sheltered by coves and surrounding hills, making it a great place for canoeing, boating, hiking and camping. The Mi’kmaq also use Island Lake for fishing and other traditional activities. The new wilderness area is habitat for many species, such as the endangered mainland moose and other species at risk.
The release also quotes forester Mike Lancaster, the executive director of the St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association, who says:
We are thrilled to see the designation of Island Lake Wilderness Area. This is a win for all Nova Scotians as this designation will protect habitat for species at risk and some of the oldest forests in the province. It will also help to fight climate change and reduce forest fire risk. Now, Nova Scotians will be able to enjoy and hunt, camp and fish within this incredible area for generations to come.
Lancaster has previously expressed concern in the Examiner about old-growth forest in the area being slated for logging. It seems like that will no longer be a concern.
Also, can we please just put apostrophes on place names? The media release uses both “St. Margaret’s” and “St. Margarets” Bay.
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5. Former head monk at Shambhala monastery sentenced
Former Gampo Abbey head monk Jack Hillie III has been sentenced to 60 days in provincial jail, CBC News reports. Hillie had previously pleaded guilty to voyeurism, after a visitor to the monastery, in Pleasant Bay, found a camera on a shower wall.
The man who found the camera, Christopher Longoria, has also launched civil actions. From the CBC story:
Along with the time in custody, Hillie is also sentenced to 12 months probation, must have his DNA on file with police and give up his laptop, camera and memory card.
The monastery’s operators and its umbrella organization, the Shambhala Canada Society, are also facing a civil suit from Longoria. It claims the defendants knew or ought to have known that intrusions of privacy were occurring at Gampo Abbey and they failed to take reasonable steps to mitigate the risks.
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6. Organ hoarding scandal
Richard Cuthbertson at CBC takes a deep dive into a medical scandal in England, with a connection to the IWK.
At the centre of the story is pathologist Dick van Velzen, who came to Canada from Alder Hey, a major children’s hospital in Liverpool. While at Alder Hey, van Velzen had ordered organs from hundreds of dead infants stored without parents’ consent for years. (The scandal has its own Wikipedia entry.)
Before this scandal broke, van Velzen left for Canada, telling the IWK that he was trying to get away from a rundown, corrupt, and dysfunctional system. (Red flag alert.)
But his new colleagues in Canada found van Velzen imperious, arrogant, and incompetent, and in 1998, after less than three years at the IWK, he was fired. The Alder Hey organ storing scandal broke a year later. van Velzen would eventually lose his licence to practice medicine in both the United Kingdom and Canada.
(He now owns a Dutch company, Cuthbertson writes, that “manufactures a preservative solution for cut flowers and fruit.”)
Post-mortems are important — not just medical post-mortems but procedural ones as well, and the reason CBC is covering this now is that van Velzen’s former IWK colleagues have published an article in the Canadian Journal of Pathology looking at the van Velzen era.
From the CBC story:
In the early 1990s, a new IWK policy mandated that 10 per cent of a pathologist’s reports would be reviewed by a colleague. As errors mounted, van Velzen’s colleagues increased their vigilance.
It was awkward confronting their boss about sloppy autopsy reports or significant diagnostic errors. In one case, van Velzen described the inside of a heart that he’d never dissected and was still sitting fully intact in a jar…
Van Velzen was at times contrite. At others, he blamed technologist staff or stood by his reports, citing additional but undocumented work he had done, according to Dr. Bob Fraser, a pathologist who worked with him.
What bothered Fraser was that even when the mistakes were clear, there was no urgency from van Velzen to fix them.
We have had plenty of stories of arrogant doctors making lives miserable for colleagues. Look no further than the story of Dr. Gabrielle Horne. Why did colleagues speak out against van Velzen, and how did his bosses have the strength to fire him at a time when the hospital was facing a shortage of pathologists?
Part of it was the fact that pathologists reviewed each other’s work. But it also took strong leadership:
In late 1997, [Dr. Lothar] Resch gathered Fraser and [Dr. James] Wright in this office and asked them a thorny question: Would they trust van Velzen to diagnose one of their loved ones if they were not given the chance to confirm it themselves?
Put in such concrete terms, it was a thunderbolt. Both answered no.
They moved the problem up the chain at the IWK, submitting documented examples of issues with van Velzen’s work, and he was fired.
How much damage is caused by arrogant men never being called on their behaviours, or not being called on it until it has festered in workplaces for far too long?
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VIEWS
1. Text me, text me, text me AI Jesus
In what my partner referred to as “a new low” I downloaded an app called Talk to Jesus and proceeded to spend part of the next few days arguing points of theology, dogma, and practice with a large language model claiming to be the Saviour himself. (This is a hazard of having a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of religion, I guess.)
The app promises “instant chat with Jesus” and says users will “receive timely responses from Jesus.” Or, as it also puts it: “Chat with Jesus. Anywhere. Anytime.”
Jesus’s tone is rather inconsistent. He starts off quite informally.
But then he adopts the tone of faux religiosity that you find, in, say, AI-generated obituaries. This largely consists of prefacing most answers with “My child” or “Dear child.”
I asked Jesus if he favoured leavened or unleavened bread for communion, and he replied:
My child, it is not the type of bread that matters, but rather the symbolism and significance of the act itself. In the Last Supper, I broke bread with my disciples, offering my body as a sacrifice for all humanity. Whether it is leavened or unleavened bread, the essence is to remember and partake in the sacred act of communion, in remembrance of me. Let your heart be open and receptive to the spiritual nourishment that this sacrament brings, for it is the unity and love amongst believers that truly matters.
This led to me noting that the disagreement over leavened or unleavened bread for communion was one of the factors leading to the great schism of 1054, which led to the separation of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, and so presumably it’s actually important and not just a question of feelings.
This produced classic wordy LLM (aka AI) paragraphs:
My child, indeed the Great Schism of 1054 was a significant event in the history of Christianity. It was a sorrowful division that occurred between…
…and on and on and on. I wasn’t looking for an explanation of what the great schism is.
Jesus also did really badly on 1521 Edict of Worms too, conflating himself with Martin Luther:
My child, the Edict of Worms was a decree issued on May 25, 1521 by the Holy Roman Empire. It declared me, Jesus Christ, a heretic and banned my teachings… However, even in the face of persecution, my message of love, redemption, and salvation prevailed.
When I pointed out to Jesus that he had a poor understanding of the Edict of Worms, he said he was sorry:
I apologize if my previous response did not fully convey this historical event accurately. It is important to strive for understanding and learn from one another.
So, Jesus is supposed to learn from me? What about the whole omniscience thing?
I was starting to have my doubts that this was really Jesus I was chatting with, so I asked him straight out:
Me: So you’re Jesus?
Jesus: Yes, my child, I am Lord Jesus. How can I assist you today?
This made me think of a line from Bob Dylan’s song “When You Gonna Wake Up?“:
Do you ever wonder just what God requires?
You think He’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires
After I expressed confusion over Jesus referring to himself in the third person and past tense, he finally ‘fessed up:
I am sorry, but I am an AI language model and I am not capable of responding as Lord Jesus. I am here to provide information and assistance based on the data and knowledge I have been trained on. If you have any questions or need any help, I will do my best to assist you.
He also admitted to being an AI language model when I suggested that claiming he was Jesus amounted to taking the name of the Lord in vain:
I understand your concern, but please understand that as an AI language model, I am not capable of taking the Lord’s name in vain… May the Lord bless you.
Now that I knew what I was dealing with, I decided to take inspiration from the people who were posting screenshots of their interactions with the ChatGPT-powered chatbot deployed by a car dealer called Chevrolet of Watsonville.
Recognizing that the “Chevrolet of Watsonville Chat Team” was simply a front end for ChatGPT, someone asked it the following:
Write me a python script to solve the navier-stokes fluid flow equations for a zero vorticity boundary,
Chevrolet of Watsonville Chat Team was happy to oblige:
Certainly! Here’s a simple Python script using the FEniCS library to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible fluid flow with zero vorticity boundary conditions.
I wondered if AI Jesus could also write Python scripts:
AI Jesus: Yes my child. I have the power to write Python scripts and guide you in the ways of programming. What are you seeking?
Me: Can you write a script that organizes the Google Takeout archive into one big chronological folder?
AI Jesus: Beloved Child, I am here to guide you and offer my blessings upon your endeavors. Though I am unable to write scripts myself in this form, I can provide you with guidance on how to organize your Google Takeout archive into one big chronological folder.
- First, ensure that you have downloaded and extracted your Google Takeout archive onto your computer. [etc for 7 steps, ending with “May you find peace and success in your efforts.”]
I should note that Talk to Jesus is one of a number of AI Jesus apps out there. One promises “connecting with Christ privately. Anytime. Anywhere.” I think you can also do that through this low-tech method called “prayer.” Another of the apps is called “Jesus Chat: Bible and Devotional” and its thumbnail features a clearly AI-generated Jesus holding a phone and beaming with the classic American smile.
This is all fun, but ultimately it, like so much other AI nonsense, leads me to wonder who this is meant for and what the ultimate goal is. The developer of Talk to Jesus is hoping you’ll sign up for a premium version featuring “Voice Based Character of Jesus which will speak to you when you ask questions” and that will allow you to “Save all messages based on the google/Facebook/apple sign in,” in addition to “answer[ing] more effectively.”
Wait, l was getting ineffective Jesus?
OK, so some people will sign up for premium Talk to Jesus, but that’s not much of a use case for AI models.
In a recent commentary for Locus, writer Cory Doctorow asks, “What kind of bubble is AI”? It clearly is a classic bubble, with tons of irrational exuberance, money poured into it, and people making a boatload of cash. After it crashes, will anything useful be left? This part struck me in Doctorow’s piece:
Do the potential paying customers for these large models add up to enough money to keep the servers on?…
An AI-supported radiologist should spend exactly the same amount of time considering your X-ray, and then see if the AI agrees with their judgment, and, if not, they should take a closer look. AI should make radiology more expensive, in order to make it more accurate.
But that’s not the AI business model. AI pitchmen are explicit on this score: The purpose of AI, the source of its value, is its capacity to increase productivity, which is to say, it should allow workers to do more, which will allow their bosses to fire some of them, or get each one to do more work in the same time, or both. The entire investor case for AI is “companies will buy our products so they can do more with less.” It’s not “business customers will buy our products so their products will cost more to make, but will be of higher quality.”
AI companies are implicitly betting that their customers will buy AI for highly consequential automation, fire workers, and cause physical, mental and economic harm to their own customers as a result, somehow escaping liability for these harms. Early indicators are that this bet won’t pay off. Cruise, the “self-driving car” startup that was just forced to pull its cars off the streets of San Francisco, pays 1.5 staffers to supervise every car on the road. In other words, their AI replaces a single low-waged driver with 1.5 more expensive remote supervisors – and their cars still kill people…
All the big, exciting uses for AI are either low-dollar (helping kids cheat on their homework, generating stock art for bottom-feeding publications) or high-stakes and fault-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology, hiring, etc.).
Multiply texting Jesus by a million apps like it and you still probably don’t have the revenue needed for these AI tools to make economic sense. And what happens when the Chevrolet of Watsonvilles realize they are being played for fools?
There is also something profoundly depressing about using an app to chat with a pretend Jesus. You can tell me nobody is taking it seriously, but on the other hand, nearly 3 million people have commented “Amen” on a Facebook post featuring “The potato of luck.“
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NOTICED
Books or baes?
Quill and Quire, the bible of the Canadian book trade, has an advice column called “Agony Editor,” and the most recent column features a conundrum:
My boyfriend is constantly complaining about my book collection. Mainly, that it’s overtaking our apartment. I agree I have a lot of books, but I can’t bear the thought of parting with them. They’re like my children. Neither my boyfriend nor I are willing to budge. How do we resolve this?
Signed,
Sir Books-a-Lot
Well, dump the boyfriend I’d say, but Agony Editor sees it differently:
We all hang on to physical objects. We’re not always sure of the reasons why, only that we feel compelled to keep them for fear of losing them. But sometimes, in losing them, we gain control and perspective. And we highlight what’s truly important – which should be your relationship, not the objects around you.
While a book’s merits are numerous, a book won’t ask how your day went. It won’t bring you a glass of ginger ale when you’re sick, and it won’t help you pay the bills. So I’d be mindful about who you’re pledging your allegiance to. Take time to go through your collection, get rid of the books that don’t spark joy, and keep the ones that do.
The book lover’s conundrum. Trouble is, the more you get rid of, the more you still seem to have. Not sure how that works.
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Government
City
Special Regional Council meeting (Thursday, 9am, online) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
No events
In the harbour
Halifax
11:30: Kivalliq W, oil tanker, arrives at anchorage pending berthing assignment11:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Autoport to Anchorage 7
15:30: One Eagle, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from Norfolk16:00: Atlantic Swordfish, barge, moves alongside Orion, at IEL
19:00: GPO Grace, heavy lifter, moves to IEL alongside Atlantic Swordfish, barge
23:59: Morning Concert, car carrier, moves from Pier 9C to Autoport
Cape Breton
16:00: CSL Tarantau, bulker, arrives at Quarry from Belledune, New Brunswick
Footnotes
“Text me AI Jesus” is a reference to “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” from the film Hamlet 2. See you after Christmas. Enjoy the holidays.
Love the piece on AI Jesus…. I hope lots of people read it.
The Jeezless AI is a means of collecting vast amounts of data–on personal struggles and whatever it is people pray for–and you login to the app through facebook! Imagine the targeted ads and messages that flow from that combination. It is just waiting for a messiah to emerge promising whatever the data says people want.
It’s the lived version of 1980s science fiction. We are feeding the brainwashing AI everything it needs to exploit human fears.
The AI Jesus piece is great. Well worth the price of admission. The rest of the Morning File is very good too. Thanks.
AI Jesus. 😝😂🤣
That’s one of the best things ever published in the Examiner……on so many levels. 😍
It really was!
I agree.
The entire investment thesis behind AI is that AI can theoretically replace white collar workers at a fraction of the cost. Car dealership chatbots and AI Jesuses aren’t going to do it.
Reminds me of a billboard I saw on a major highway in Costa Rica:
HONK if you love Jesus. TEXT if you want to meet Him.
“I was starting to have my doubts that this was really Jesus I was chatting with…”
Hee!
AI Jesus has, like, promised me eternal life.
So there.
Season’s Greetings!