Good morning, and welcome to the weekend.
Grab your cup of coffee or tea, and sit down with a selection of this week’s great reads from The Globe and Mail. In this issue, Ian Brown explores the fine line between horror and amazement in the rapidly developing artificial-intelligence race. What alarmed him the most about its advancement wasn’t so much the new tech, as much as it was the attitude toward it. With each expert he interviewed, he said the sentiment was the same. “They all talked about machines becoming as smart as human beings,” he said. “And then they talked about machines becoming smarter than human beings.” There was an entire segment of coders, Brown said, who believed that machines would, in some capacity or another, eventually be the ones in charge.
Tavia Grant travels to a remote Peruvian village to get a first-hand look at human-rights violations that a Canadian government watchdog launched five years ago to investigate abuses by multinational companies has seemingly ignored. Getting to this village was no small feat: Flight cancellations, rampant instability and violent protests in Iquitos, a city Grant was travelling through, added an extra week to her trip. Deep in the rainforest of Peru’s northern Amazon region, Grant said it was a “sobering” experience to see evidence of lingering contamination, with oil leaking out of storage areas and into rivers, visible on the plants, while the air in certain areas had developed a sour smell.
Meanwhile, Mark MacKinnon writes about Ukraine’s march toward justice for its civilians, one year after Russia’s crimes in Bucha shocked the world.
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The peril and the promise of artificial intelligence
Illustration by Anson Chan
ChatGPT is the now-famous wonder and terror of machine learning that is about to change the world and our understanding of ourselves as human beings. It represents the most notable development in the 70-year history of artificial intelligence, and the longest stride so far in AI’s quest to produce a machine with a human’s intellectual capacities. The illusion that it is “intelligent” and “thinks” can be convincing: It can pass management exams at Ivy League schools, score high on the SATs, and has aced both the LSAT and bar exams. But at what cost? Ian Brown navigates the alarming and breathtaking world of artificial intelligence moving at breakneck speed.
Bags containing organic remains contaminated with oil, taken from an area of the Achuar territory of Jose Olaya, and abandoned by Frontera Energy at an oil base in block 192.Patrick Murayari/The Globe and Mail
In 2018, the government created the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, an office it said would have robust powers to demand answers and shame laggard companies. But five years later, the CORE, which has an annual budget of $4.9-million, has yet to complete even a single investigation. Tavia Grant travels to a remote Peruvian village where locals are asking why the Canadian government is missing in action and investigates what went wrong with CORE.
Residents of Bucha lined as live chain near the map of Ukraine made from candles to greet Ukrainian soldeirs participated ion the liberation of the city of Bucha, Ukraine, March 31, 2023.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
It’s been a year since the Kyiv suburb of Bucha experienced a brutal month-long occupation by Russian forces. Since then, the world has heard testimony from survivors on the systematic torture, rape and executions that took place. Now, as Ukrainians commemorate the anniversary of Bucha’s liberation, Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General, Andrii Kostin, says he has evidence of 9,000 Russian war crimes committed in Bucha and the surrounding area, including 37 children killed during Russia’s 33-day occupation of the region.
TikTok is helping libraries flip their quiet, stuffy reputation on its head
Illustration by The Globe and Mail
Libraries that offer a glimpse of the inner workings of these community hubs are thriving on TikTok. Unlike any other social-media platform, TikTok’s unpredictable algorithm and its content environment – charmingly unpolished, fun and educational – fit the diverse services libraries offer. Librarians, including those from Alberta’s Grande Prairie Public Library, are harnessing the app to redefine what the library represents, and in the process, are extending their reach within the community and beyond.
Back to Portapique: Nova Scotia communities move forward three years after mass shooting
Momentos at a road side memorial in Debert, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2023.Riley Smith/The Globe and Mail
In April of 2020, the sleepy neighbourhoods along Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy fell prey to a gunman on a rampage that left 22 people dead in the worst mass shooting in Canada’s history. While the struggle to cope with the tragedy continues, there are signs of healing as a public inquiry releases its long-awaited report.
Read more: Opinion: The RCMP is less than the sum of its parts. It must change, or die
Terra Bruce Productions wants to rock the Canadian musical-theatre status quo
Franco Boni poses for a portrait under a fresco in the auditorium of the Regent Theatre on Mt. Pleasant Ave., in Toronto on March 21, 2023.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Most theatregoers in Canada likely haven’t heard of Terra Bruce Productions. The commercial theatre company founded in Newfoundland and Labrador is looking to change that as it “aggressively” pursues plans to put itself on Canada’s musical-theatre map. At the centre of its push is an extensive rebuild of Toronto’s Regent Theatre, which, in its heyday as the Crest, played a crucial role in the development of Canadian theatre. The redevelopment, Kelly Nestruck reports, holds the promise of opening up a much-needed space for the creation or transfer of other shows that won’t have to be imported hits or international tours in order to turn a profit.
Ariel Helwani conquers MMA broadcasts and now looks to branch out
Ariel Helwani at his studio in New York City, March 27, 2023.Kellyann Petry/The Globe and Mail
After aspiring to become the Howard Stern of combat sports, Ariel Helwani seems to be emerging as the Barbara Walters of the genre, often going toe-to-toe with some of the most menacing figures in MMA. And after playing a larger-than-life character, he also now faces the very pressing business of figuring out how to be the real version of himself, in public, while he’s still learning who that is. Simon Houpt reports on Helwani’s rise from a wimpy Jewish kid from Montreal who loved the WWE and idolized American broadcast legends to heavy-hitter in the world of combat sports journalism.
Scarborough made me who I am today. I love it. Why don’t you?
A cacophony of street signs on Eglinton Avenue East in 1974, more than 20 years before its amalgamation into Toronto. This was the community that Omer Aziz and his family called home.JOHN McNEILL/The Globe and Mail
The neighbourhood Omer Aziz grew up in was diverse and full of working-class pride, but all that its critics could see was crime and isolation. By the age of 10, he said he had the feeling that he was from a place no one cared about. Social services were substandard. Representatives at either the provincial or national level seemed not to care much for Scarborough, unless it was election season. As he grew older, he asked himself the same question: Why did he – and others from Scarborough – feel so unliked and unwanted? Now, Aziz is setting the record straight about his hometown, which he credits as a major influence in the man he is today.
Drawn from the headlines
Majestic ‘ice bears’ are seeing less of winter, and more of their neighbours. The Weather Network, MAR 28, as drawn by James Collier for The Globe and Mail.
Majestic ‘ice bears’ are seeing less of winter, and more of their neighbours.Illustration by JAMES COLLIER FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL