Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. If you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
🤖 Clanker memes and robophobia
🏢 Cohere working with Ottawa to bring artificial intelligence to federal service
🧠 New app helps mental health patients reality-check hallucinations
⛔ Musicians pull out of Spotify over CEO’s drone-tech connections
INTERNET CULTURE
On TikTok, ‘clanker’ memes are funny – and also represent our growing AI anxiety
The term 'clanker' dates back to Star Wars. It was used as a robot slur for the separatist battle droids of the Clone Wars.© Lucasfilm Ltd. & ª. All rights/The Associated Press
For the past week, my TikTok feed has been swamped with memes depicting a future where robots and AI companions are so integrated into society, there’s been a surge in robophobia. In this dystopian future, robots are treated as second-class citizens – called slurs like “clankers,” “tin skins” and “rust buckets” – and cross-platform relationships (for example, between humans and robots) are considered taboo.
In one viral video, captioned “Me in 2041 when my daughter brings her AI boyfriend home,” a bigoted father interrogates the boyfriend: “Normally we don’t let clankers at the table” he remarks, followed by “I bet you battery bloods wish you could have a terabyte, right?” pointing to a piece of pizza.
The clanker videos are silly and goofy. But I think they also reflect a growing discomfort that people are having with the proliferation of AI, as the technology is jammed into every app and device, and threatens to displace human jobs. Yet, while these videos take place in a not-so-distant future, we’re already somewhat living the society they’re satirizing. “AI boyfriends” and “AI friends” are very much a current phenomenon, and we’re already seeing how relationship problems can arise when the underlying technology changes.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Cohere working with Ottawa to bring AI to public sector
The federal government is working with Toronto-based startup Cohere to look for ways to deploy AI technology across its operations. Ottawa and the startup signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, which highlights Cohere’s desire to sell its tools to the public sector – and the government’s desire to use AI to boost productivity while procuring products and services from domestic companies. Founded in 2019, the company builds large language models, or LLMs, and has focused its products on businesses and government clients with high security and privacy needs. The company signed a similar non-binding agreement earlier this summer with the British government.
Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on improving government efficiency and sees AI as a tool to achieve that. However Evan Solomon, Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, says AI adoption is not meant to slash jobs. “The focus on how all AI is going to do is take a job – the same conversation was had around the bank machine and the computer,” he said during an interview with Globe reporter Joe Castaldo. “It is a powerful tool, and the goal is to deliver better service to people.”
MENTAL HEALTH
New app aims to help people living with schizophrenia and other mental health issues
The Canadian startup A4i (which stands for App for Independence) is using technology to help patients with severe mental health issues perform reality checks of their hallucinations. The app’s hallmark feature is an auditory hallucination detector, for which the company got a patent in 2023.
A patient can use the app to record sounds around them and, by answering prompts, figure out whether what they’re hearing is real or imagined. Co-founder Sean Kidd, a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said the inspiration for the feature came after meeting a patient with schizophrenia who was experiencing persistent, distressing auditory hallucinations. That led the psychologist to look into what phone-based tools might be available for such patients – he couldn’t find any.
The app is now being adopted by some mental health hospitals in Canada and the U.S., including the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Ontario and the Riverside University Health System in Southern California. Read the full article here.
SMARTPHONE BANS
Have cellphone bans been effective in schools? Tell me your thoughts!
Canadian schools are increasingly banning smartphone use in class.Illustration by Rob Dobi
Last fall, schools across Canada enacted policies that restricted phone use in the classroom. The increased use of cellphones and social media by students has been a source of concern for policy-makers, educators and parents, and is often blamed for incidents of cyberbullying, disrupted sleep patterns and an inability to focus.
Now as students return to school, I’m checking in on the status of the bans: How effective were they? Were students less distracted in class? Or did they find sneaky ways to use their phones anyway? Did it affect how lessons were delivered? Are these bans really making a difference? I’d love to chat with teachers, parents, principals and students (forward this to the teens in your life!) about their experience. Send me an e-mail at sedwards@globeandmail.com.
What else we’re reading this week:
The AI doomers are getting doomier (The Atlantic)
Why did a $10 billion startup let me vibe-code for them – and why did I love it? (WIRED)
Social media is dead. Meta has admitted as much. What now? (Fast Company)
Adult Money
GAMING
Sony ups the price of the PS5 in the U.S.RICHARD A. BROOKS/AFP/Getty Images
PlayStation 5, $510
It’s a good day to be Canadian, if you want to buy a new PlayStation 5. This week, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it was raising the price of the console in the United States by US$50, up to around US$550, owing to a “challenging economic environment.” The price hike coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, including from the global manufacturing hub China, where the Japan-based company makes the majority of the consoles.
But in Canada, they’re currently $510, which is $70 off the regular price here. Microsoft and Nintendo also hiked the prices of the Xbox and Switch, respectively, earlier this year, citing market challenges.
Culture radar
STREAMING
Artists pull music off Spotify in protest of CEO’s military-tech connections
Spotify and other music streaming platforms have long faced criticism over poor compensation for working musicians. Now, some artists are drawing a connection between the wealth that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek generated on the backs of musicians’ labour and the destination of that money – and are choosing to end their relationship with the service. In June, Ek revealed that his investment firm Prima Materia led a €600-million ($962-million) funding round in the German defence-tech company Helsing, which develops AI-powered military drones. Ek is the company’s chairman.
Some of the Canadian musicians who have left the platform in protest of its connections include Simone Schmidt, who performs as Fiver, Cindy Lee and Chad VanGaalen. “I didn’t ever think that I would be in a position where my art would be used for something so despicable and so inhumane,” VanGaalen said in an interview with The Globe’s arts reporter, Josh O’Kane. Read the full article here.