Tech giants could face billion-dollar fines for ignoring social-media, AI ban: Kinew

WINNIPEG — Manitoba may impose billion-dollar fines on tech companies that violate a proposed ban on social media and AI chatbots for youths under the age 16.

“The enforcement is going to have to include a fine framework and they’re going to be bigger fines than you’ve ever seen in Manitoba before,” Premier Wab Kinew said Tuesday. “Probably, with some numbers that have B’s in them.”

Kinew took questions after announcing Saturday that Manitoba would be the first Canadian province to ban social media for youth.

The fines need to be huge to deter big tech platforms that rake in billions of dollars at the expense of targeted youth, Kinew said at an unrelated event.

“In my mind, we have to set the fines at a level that we’ve never seen in this province before,” he said.

Companies such as Meta Platforms, Inc., which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads, will spend more money on data centres this year than the entire size of Manitoba’s economy, he said.

“What is a $100-million fine? It’s nothing,” Kinew said.

Enforcement of the ban will target the companies, not youths or their parents, the premier said.

“Our legislation likely will go so far as to say that this cannot be grounds for apprehension of a child by the child-welfare system. I just want to make very, very clear that none of this is about trying to put it on parents,” he said.

“In fact, we’re trying to help parents.”

The province is willing to consult with youths and said much of the legwork still needs to be done. He didn’t have a timeline for when legislation will be introduced and said he can’t share any of its details until then.

He did spell out his government’s rationale for banning AI chatbots and social media for Manitobans under the age of 16.

“The entire approach for us is about education,” he said. “Did you know the mental-health impacts that this can have on children and youth? Did you know about the risks to body image, the risks potentially even of self-harm?

“Did you know that these big tech platforms — some of the richest people in the world — have been employing armies of PhDs with expertise in exploiting your brain and your nervous system to make their products more addictive?”

The premier was dismissive when he was asked about youths who are concerned that a ban will cut them off from friends and needed help with homework.

“What would we say to a young person who argues that they need to vape in order to form friendships? We would say that the harm outweighs any potential benefit,” he said.

“The same is true of social media, maybe even more so … Look what it’s done to us. Donald Trump is the president. You have kids who are harming themselves. You have measles outbreaks in our province. All these things are because we’ve let social media dominate our lives without understanding how pernicious the billionaires who designed this have been at targeting us and making us addicted to our phones.”

Kinew said young people, whose brains are still developing, need protection from the damaging impacts of online peer pressure and accompanying self-esteem issues.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen tragic events in Canada related to AI chatbots because they are currently being developed by companies and by tech billionaires who don’t share our values.”

On Thursday, OpenAI boss Sam Altman issued an apology to the people of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., for failing to alert police when the U.S.-based company learned of the troubling gun-related posts of an 18-year-old woman before she killed eight people — including six children — and wounded dozens more in February.

“There is a path forward for AI to be developed in a responsible way,” Kinew said. “But we aren’t seeing that in the consumer products that are available to children. So that’s why AI is going to be part of the ban.”

The province wants to work with teachers, some of whom may have incorporated AI and social media into their lesson plans, Kinew said, adding YouTube will be included, as well.

Kinew said he’d welcome news that other provinces and federal officials wanted to join Manitoba.

“This is about protecting our kids from damage to their mental health that’s being caused by a class of tech billionaires who don’t care about the rest of us,” he said. “The more the merrier.”

» Winnipeg Free Press