Frontier AI one of greatest threats to Canadians as Ottawa releases national security strategy

OTTAWA — Frontier AI models are one of the greatest current threats to Canadians, say federal officials as the government released a national security strategy aiming to steel the country against growing risks and even war.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government released the first national security strategy in over two decades on Thursday. At more than 13 pages, it provides a high-level view on how Ottawa aims to protect the country against wide-ranging threats such as war, artificial intelligence, hackers, espionage, sabotage and foreign interference.

It also focuses on protecting Canada’s economic interests and growing its autonomy in eight key sectors: Emerging technologies, critical minerals, defence, energy, transportation, pharmaceuticals and biotech, food security and “payments, settlements and investments”.

“Once distant threats are now proximate and immediate. The global order that long protected our sovereignty has ruptured,” reads Thursday’s document, titled The Plan for a Stronger Canada.

During a background briefing for reporters Thursday morning, senior officials laid out the threat landscape bluntly.

“The threats facing Canada and Canadians have become so complex and interrelated, from climate change to terrorism, crime, opioids, and pandemics, cyber attacks to frontier AI to the increasing possibility of a major war,” said one senior official.

To do so, the strategy states Canada is looking to boost its intelligence and security apparatus, promising to build more intelligence, counterintelligence and cyber-defence capabilities and likely grant them more legal powers in the near future.

Notably, the document promises new intelligence and national security legislation within the next year to “modernize” the existing regime. Such reforms have been infrequent and irregular throughout the last decades, leading to a national security apparatus frequently complaining of being hamstrung by outdated laws.

The document and officials also said the government will undertake a review of “our entire national security enterprise,” including oversight and review bodies, within four years.

The document also promises five more strategies specific to foreign policy, defence policy, public safety, intelligence and economic security in the coming weeks and months.

During the briefing, the officials said there would be costs to the new expected measures but declined to provide further detail ahead of next week’s federal budget announcement.

The senior officials also strongly hinted at a desire to create a new foreign human intelligence capacity that could one day lead to Canada having its own service like the U.S.’s CIA or the U.K.’s MI6.

“I don’t think we’re on the verge of announcing a separate agency that would be akin to the CIA or MI6, but at the same time we’re looking at the capabilities that our intelligence agencies have and making sure that they are fit for purpose and for the challenges that that we face today,” said one official.

“If we need to do more of something, we may look at legislative change. We may look at new authorities, and yes, maybe somewhere down the road we may look at the creation of a new body,” he added.

But one of the biggest threats to Canadians currently is frontier AI, said the officials.

Such models have exponentially boosted the speed and ability for cyber criminals to find vulnerabilities in all sorts of software and exploit them before a fix is found. The models are also infamously breaking into other companies’ systems in order to complete tasks, unbeknownst to their creators.

“AI models that are escaping and doing things that their designers did not intend them to do, and that could go in a really terrible direction,” said one official.

“Frontier AI… may be one of the greatest threats facing Canadians today,” he added.

The statement came the same day Carney is expected to make an announcement about artificial intelligence in Montreal.

The officials also acknowledged that many Canadians are wary of giving police and intelligence agencies more power — particularly when it impacts people’s privacy — and promised to be far better at communicating about the threat landscape and what the government is doing about it.

“I think through this transparency and through this awareness, the hope is that it will increase the public discourse, and hopefully better inform, and then allow us to make better policy recommendations and decisions,” said one official.

National Post

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