I do my best to avoid the big tech oligopoly, I did not really realize how much of my time and money was going to it until 2025 when I started getting off of it and deeper into the home labing stuff.
Yeah, it’s been a journey for sure. I think I started divesting myself from google in 2015 when it made a deal with us military.
Now I have my own calendar, contacts, maps & GPS, alternate email, YouTube alternatives, hosting my own music, etc etc.
It’s a lot of work. A lot. I jump through hoops to do stuff that is convenient for most.
However, when I hear about the latest misuse of private data, it feels worth the effort. If infrastructure failed in an apocalypse, I’d have my opus music library.
Ultimately, my data remaining in my control is my top priority. MY DATA, MY RULES.
If I could do anything. I would start in 1997 when I first logged into the internet.
I still watch youtube because there is not really a gooder option, but I have all the Google ads and tracking stripped away.
It’s going to take years (and truckloads of money) to build domestic capacity to rival what the US companies currently have. And then you will have to pay that money back with a much smaller total potential customer base, while competing against established international competitors with deeper pockets.
It’s not impossible, and some players will absolutely be able to chip away at it, but it’s not going to be as easy or fast as people what it to be.
We don’t have to sell EXCLUSIVELY to a Canadian market. We can sell to other countries.
Sure, we can work with some other countries, but the reasons we want a “made in Canada” solution are the same reasons other countries want their own locally controlled data infrastructure.
Parts of the EU are doing it.
Canada’s small population to serve inference to is an advantage to some extent in such a capex heavy space, but the money being committed federally is pretty tiny. I look at $3.3 billion committed for AI over 5 years when compared with $60B for new subs, $3B for Arctic patrol ships, and up to $27B on F-35s if we go through with that order and don’t think we’re being serious about sovereign AI at all. We don’t have to be an OpenAI spending half a trillion on data centers for training and inference to reach a market of a billion+ people, but $3.3B over 5 years is not being serious about carving out our own independence from hyperscalers.
Canada - especially the federal government - is balls deep in with Microslop. Policy makers are 100% being lobbied + no idea how to even navigate the clusterfuck of a tech stack that’s been built up over the decades.
But hey they going to keep mandating everyone to go back into the office and use Microslop Teams when US tech companies have already publicly said they cannot guarantee that Canadian data doesn’t get router through US servers. cue applause /s
Even if the data stays in Canada on Canadian servers using Microslop systems the US can still get it because of the US CLOUD act.
I’m waiting to see what comes as a final version of the national AI strategy, but what my feeling for a while is that what we’re seeing with AI in Canada is very reminiscent of what we’ve seen in O&G, but even more lopsided. Lots of US ownership, raw material (both mineral and data) coming from Canada but with value-added processes owned by US companies, revenue that will flow south, and lock-in to their systems.
We have zero PhDs in Parliament, 7% STEM degrees. No one understands AI so any strategy will be written by lobbyists.
We don’t have them in parliament, but we do have them. I’m not a big fan of Evan Solomon as the minister of AI, but the AI advisory council has some people who are very knowledgeable and have been deep in the AI space for years. So, there is ready access to great knowledge and intelligence. That said, Solomon’s approach is very market-driven and focused on entrepreneurship and business growth, and that’s no-doubt why he’s in the roll. The approach from the top of government down has been to go market-driven.
Hopefully that will not happen this time around, oh who am I kidding it is going to happen.
Fuck AI start with Canadian cloud and OS first ffs!
We need a police force in Canada that does not use Microslop and then follow the French lead. France is in the process of dropping Microslop for some linux distro in all public agencies.
I’m Canadian. I’ve got some old disc drives and usb sticks in the back of my closet that I’m not using anymore. I will contribute them to Canada so we can store our own data in our own data silos. BOOM! Tech problem solved! /s
Burn it down and rebuild it.
regardless of any of this, we do not need hyperscale AI data centres for any reason whatsoever, fucking hell
