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The Current Transcript for January 22, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: So you are now hearing the other side of this story. You're hearing from the student who has been at the centre of all this, saying that from his perspective, he was the one being calm and he was the one.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It was a short snippet of video that went viral this past weekend, triggering a social media frenzy of outrage and judgment. And then there was the rest of the video and the narrative about a white teenager in a Trump MAGA hat in a racist faceoff with an Indigenous Elder who is also a U.S. military veteran, suddenly became more complicated. And now there is still some outrage, there's been doubling down, but also some mea culpas, some backing off. So is this a cautionary tale of the harms of ill-informed Twitter mobs or a distraction from something still troubling? You can decide as you listen to our panel in just a moment. And then guns and the law, the new law.

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VOICE: The level of violence is unacceptable to Canadians. It's unacceptable to us and we're prepared to take action.

AMT: As the former chief of Toronto's police force, Bill Blair knows the tragedies of gun violence. As the federal minister responsible for ushering in tougher gun restrictions, he has to answer to those on both sides of the divide. So how's that going to work? In half an hour, we follow up on our One Bullet series with Bill Blair. And then, so there you are, a tech savvy, modern individual. You have Siri on your phone, Alexa in your home and well you're getting a little personal.

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VOICE: I said oh. I think I said f-off Siri and then Siri very quickly said, I would never talk to you that way, Sam.

AMT: Is it okay to yell or swear at your AI device? Do we have ethical and moral obligations to robots? Hear that discussion in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Video of teen, Indigenous protester standoff let people confirm their own fears: writer

Guests: Dave Seglins

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Sound of drumming at the Lincoln Memorial.

AMT: Well that is how it sounded, but by now you've likely seen how it looked. An older Native American man, drumming solemnly before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Inches away from his face is a white high school aged boy, looking him in the eye and beaming a steady cryptic grin from beneath his red Make America Great Again hat. Now what it all meant has consumed much of the Internet and the cable news world for the past few days and again overnight. A typical hot take reading was that this single scene summed up all that is wrong with America. It's racism, bullying and hyper partisan politics, but this was not a meme, this was real life. And the story appears more complicated than it first seemed. And a warning some may find this strong language you're about to hear disturbing.

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VOICE: See how you got these pompous bastards come down here in the middle of a native rally with their dirty ass hat on?

AMT: Well not pictured in the viral video clip was that man, one of a group of protesters who call themselves Black Hebrew Israelites. They had been harassing both the students, Nick Sandmann with his Catholic school peers, along with Indigenous protesters including Vietnam veteran, Nathan Phillips and other visitors to the Lincoln Memorial. So as we learn more about the people involved and their motivations there is a bigger story emerging of how we are quick to jump too often damning conclusions in the blink of an eye. For more on all of this, I'm joined by two guests. Robby Soave is an associate editor at the libertarian Reason magazine. We reached him in Washington D.C. Naveneet Alang is a technology and culture writer based in Toronto. He's here in our Toronto studio. Hello and welcome to you both.

NAVENEET ALANG: Hello.

ROBBY SOAVE: Hello.

AMT: Robby, let's start with you. How do you think the mainstream media and other commentators online got it wrong when the story first surfaced?

RS: Well if you just look at the brief clip, it's easy to mistake what's happening. You miss so much important context, but if you know, if you go back and watch, I mean there's almost two hours of footage, I've watched a lot of it. I mean the fact that this really crazy group, the Black Hebrew Israelites. I live in D.C., I've actually encountered them before. They set up shop near the metro station and I mean they're vile people and they were shouting obscenities, anti-gay slurs, racial slurs at the high school boys for an hour and the boys actually don't react badly to it at all. Eventually they're doing cheers to kind of drown them out. There's nothing wrong about it and that's when the Native American veteran shows up and really misreads the situation, think they're threatening the black people, when really it's the other way around. So I think that should really change people's understanding of what was happening and for some people it has.

AMT: Remind us of some of the things that were being said by people on social media about the student at the center of this.

RS: Right, people on social media initially were saying that you know, he reminds them of a kid who looks like you the school shooter. He says that he would be segregation era person a real member of the KKK. You know this is the face of evil. This is this is a symbol of the racism in our country that will endure for four decades. I am very over the top stuff. And while you know there was still that I can tell from problematic behavior as crowd in the hall. The edited video evidence just does not support the charge that this was our target is racial harassment of this man.

AMT: Do you get the sense that people's views of the exchange have shifted as more people have watched the longer video?

RS: Many people's views have shifted. Jake Tapper tweeted of CNN tweeted my story about this. Meghan McCain of The View did as well. You know a lot of people are reversing course but I've seen a lot of doubling down. Like you said earlier which is that which is frustrating because they think the evidence the contrary everything is quite compelling if you really open your eyes to it.

AMT: Naveneet Alang, I want you to weigh in on this. First of all what do you make of the wave of shock and outrage that followed the video clip that first surfaced?

NA: Mean I think that it was understandable because the image was almost primed to generate outrage. It was so symbolic and evoked so much about not just American history but the contemporary current moment that it was almost impossible for it not to turn to ricochet out through social media.

AMT: And how have you seen the conversation that people are having online about this story evolve as more information about that video comes out, as the statement from the student comes out?

NA: I have seen people retract statements but I think that there's been sort of a strange phenomenon where people have sort of bent over backwards or or have gone to great lengths to try and back off from there from their initial impressions. And I think that they're doing that in order to kind of produce a sense of objectivity that I think that in this particular instance it may actually be doing more harm than good. So I think that that what ends up happening in a situation like this is that is that you get so there's a usual cycle right. So there is an event happens. It ricochets out through social media. There is a storm of reaction. Excuse me. There is then a storm of counter reaction. And what ends up happening is the things that are plainly obvious are true. And when you look at the video despite the fact that the evidence I think changes the interpretation. The basic fact is is that there were a group of young white men who were behaving in a way that was less than ideal and was and was sort of tinged with with racism and I think that obvious fact gets gets lost in this rush to kind of pass in microscopic detail you know the mechanisms and the mechanics of the video.

AMT: So even after seeing the longer video, you watched the longer video, you watched the other angles? You say that what they did was racist. Explain to us how you say that.

NA: Well I mean I think that when you when you look at the video that sort of mob of young white men some of them are just merely confused. Some of them are just engaged in kind of group behavior that happens when when a large group of young people get together and some of them are are you know are doing the sort of the Tomahawk Chop that we know is is a racist act used to make fun of Native people and I think that that although the context has has has obviously changed. I think that that's clear. We can't then somehow brush under the rug that there is still clearly an act of racism going on.

AMT: Robby Soave what do you say to that?

RS: You know I've watched it many times. Yes I used to make it with one person maybe if you are there do at Tomahawk gesture. Obviously that's racially insensitive and I hope you know someone talked to them about not doing that and why that that's problematic. But most of the kids are just jumping in waving their are because they're doing it they're just sort of doing a pep rally here and they're doing that before before Nathan Phillips, the Native American man even comes up. I mean I agree that there is insensitive behavior. Maybe they I don't know what would have been given that he approached them. What might have been their correct course of action they should have fallen by and allow for his kind of solemn drum, the drumming that he was doing. Maybe that would have been the most ideal situation sure this highly charged look up movement could have been improved but to me that is that is different than saying, I mean racism is a staggering charge I think that even racism is different than maybe racial insensitivity or cultural insensitivity which I think is that there is less furious than should be maybe should be taught out of people and we can expect better by. But all of this is aside from that aside from the fact that if we're talking about the most wrong if the crazy group of poor people first of all in I'm sorry but they can fill up the Native American veteran he while we mis represented this story when he talked to the media. He described the boys as beef and black leaders as their prey. That is entirely backwards, he said this to media outlets. So I mean his behaviour here was pretty bad.

AMT: Naveneet, you want to get in on that. What are you thinking?

NA: Yeah. I mean I think that no one comes off looking especially great in any of the clips I think that it should be clear of that am not defending any actions of any one group but I think that something that people who have experienced racism in their own lives know is that there is a slightly kind of absurd process by which the only things that can ever be classified as racist are the explicit utterance of racial slurs or racial violence. But what people know who have it who have experienced racism is that it's often this sort of strange game of interpretation that you have to play where it's the way that someone looks at you it's slightly inflected language it's slightly threatening behaviour and it's the kind of thing that when you have experienced it your entire life you sort of know what it looks like and I think that there's been this sort of strange process in the past few years in my media by which we hit things that are quite clearly and obviously racist and I think that for example you know everything linked to the Trump administration and the way in which that make America great again hat has become a racist symbol. People are unwilling to just sort of say that a thing is actually true that a racist thing is racist.

AMT: I want to play a clip. This is Julie Zimmerman, a freelance writer based in Cincinnati. She wrote a piece for The Atlantic called I Failed the Covington Catholic Test. Here's some of what she had to say.

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VOICE: What is it that I've learned, I've to not trust the knee jerk outrage that so many of us spend our lives wallowing. I wish I had taken a pass following all day Saturday following this story because in the end, is this even news? I would argue that it isn't. If video cameras hadn't been there and if social media didn't exist, is this event sufficiently consequential that people need to know about it? I dont think it is. It's just that emotional visceral reaction you have to watching that video clip and the way it either supports or contradicts all the beliefs that you hold, that gives it such currency.

AMT: Robby Soave, do you agree this blew up to the extent it did because people were bringing their own preconceived notions, their preconceived views?

RS: Yeah I mean I think there was bias at play. You know a group of white teenagers in red MAGA were there for an explicitly political conservative reason. They were there for the March for Life. You know what is a good villain for the story. For many in the media who have been at work I do and I just love it. I you know I am no defender of President or many of his policies I disagree with some of them I would very much agree with in that I think they have racist implications but that at some objectivity is important. You know were talking about this this moment now you know you can disagree whether you news. Obviously its not consequential but were talking about it regardless because the things that happen in things people care about it not a whole lot of people cared about this story.

AMT: Well was this is a Rorschach test, Robby?

RS: Yeah, well I think initially it was, but now it's, we're beyond the point where you can just see whatever you want to see it. I think. I mean it's confusing here. I mean the answer is there, we can watch the footage, we can maybe, there's room for some disagreement on interpreting exactly what's going on, but I just think it's really clear that you know most of the kids are behaving like kids, but not in a particularly noteworthy or in a manner that is stridently condemned and certainly not the main kid, Sandmann.

AMT: Naveneet, was this a Rorschach test?

NA: I mean I think so yeah, but it's a slightly complicated one because I think that what people are looking for is they're looking for a sort of concrete evidence that the current political climate is producing an uptick in xenophobia. So so that people recognize that this thing is happening and they're looking for a demonstrable example of that happening and so I think there is a bias or unknown or an investment in saying Ah look this thing that I know to be true is happening and here and here it is. So I think that it's that objectivity is still a crucial thing that we still need to focus on what is actually true and presenting a fair and balanced perspective of things. But I think that what often ends up happening is that there are these sort of bad faith interruptions in discourse that say well know what you think is true is not actually true and what ends up happening is that it ends up muddying the water completely. And so that what is clear and obvious which is to say that you know that there is there is absolutely been an increase in this phobia in the past couple of years across from North America if not the Western world. That tends to get muddied by this sort of microscopic microscopic analysis of well in this particular moment in the video it doesn't appear that they were being racist, but maybe they are over here.

AMT: But doesn't it also get muddied by picking up one particular point in the video and saying ah ha, this is emblematic, when in fact there might be other things that are happening there are much more emblematic of what you're talking about somewhere else, but we have a whole bunch of columnists and journalists weighing in, none of whom I should mention were actually there, who are watching a video thousands of miles away some of them and weighing in.

NA: Yeah. And I think that one of the strange things that is happening at the moment, as someone who focuses on technology, is that social media has this sort of odd tendency to demand that each individual event that we analyse stands for something much larger than itself. And so this particular event was supposed to be symbolic of all of the tensions of the current political climate.

AMT: And you have to do that if you're going to be an armchair journalist, right? If you can't ever go and cover something then you have to do that because otherwise your comment is irrelevant.

NA: Yeah and it's also the pace of social media exacerbates that problem right because you need to produce those opinions on such a rapid pace.

AMT: Or you think you do?

NA: Yeah, or you think you do.

AMT: Well I want you to hear one more clip because when we talk about what we see and what is perceived and this is James Alcock, he's a psychology professor at York University and why people react differently to what they see in that video.

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VOICE: All our perception of social events, we tend to think about it being sort of like a video recording, but we're always interpreting. We're always seeing through the lens of our own values. So when I look at this, one of the first things that struck me was all these kids with the Make America Great hats on. So right off the bat, it would seem to me, especially if you're an American, it defines us in terms of groups of tribes almost. These clearly are kids who are supporters of Donald Trump and if you happen to be a supporter of Donald Trump then you are more likely to see what they're doing as justified or benign than if you are opposed to Donald Trump, in which case right off the bat, you're likely to interpret their behavior as aggressive, abusive, insulting and so forth.

AMT: So he mentions those hats. They are powerful and offensive symbols of racism and misogyny to a lot of Americans and people outside of the United States, but not to everyone and does the fact that many of the boys were wearing them actually tell us what their intentions were, Naveneet?

NA: I think that the problem with trying to gauge acts of prejudice by intention is that you can't really ever see what's inside someone's heart. I think that this idea that we can judge whether or not someone's racist by by way of thinking about well what's truly inside their soul is actually a bit misleading. I think that you have to look at acts and you have to look at social context you have to look at history and you have to look at the way that things signify a particular cultural moment. And I think that I think it's absolutely valid justified and backed up opinion to say that the MAGA hats are symbolic of misogyny and racism.

AMT: So I'm wondering what you each think of what this episode tells us about politics and race? I'm going to say in America today, but clearly it spills over the border. A lot of Canadians are weighing in on this, a lot of Canadians have big opinions on this. Naveneet you start.

NA: I think it's proof that social media has has sort of sped up and potentially corrupted discourse to the extent that it has kind of produced the climate in which we have to produce judgments on on particular events perhaps before we have all of the facts. But the flipside of that is that it also produced the climate in which what is clear and what is true can often get muddied by the simple act of discussion on social media.

AMT: Robby Soave, what do you think we're learning?

RS: I'm always reluctant to criticize new technology because there's often moral panic to me and new technology often has all the benefits we don't that we're not, that we don't often tout. Social media allows us to interact with everyone immediately, instantly. You can cultivate an audience, you can interact with journalists and prominent people and it facilitates this, but I think we are seeing here the downside of this ability to react so immediately. I think the forum, particularly Twitter rewards snark quick, sort of not well thought out sound bites and encourages people to pile on and that was sort of used for really ill effect here. And it would just be better if everyone could take a deep breath and kind of step back and wait for the facts to roll in.

AMT: We have to leave it there. We're out of time. Thank you both for this conversation. I've been speaking with Robby Soave, associate editor at the libertarian Reason magazine and Naveneet Alang, technology and culture writer. He's in our Toronto studio. Robby is in Washington D.C. Let us know what you think of this and what you think of what happened on Twitter and other social media over the last few days on all of this. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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We're working to 'plug the leaks' that put guns in wrong hands: Minister Bill Blair

Guests: Bill Blair

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, you start out by calling your digital assistant by its name, whether that's Google, Siri, Alexa, something else, but after a few frustrating commands, you may find yourself calling that same assistant something you can't say on the radio. Is it wrong to bad mouth your digital assistant and what does the answer say about how we live with AI? That's in half an hour. But first, One Bullet, the top brass weighs in.

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AMT: Over the last week, our One Bullet series has explored the issue of gun violence in Canada. We've heard some powerful stories of unsolved crimes, domestic abuse, suicide and more, all related to gang violence. Yesterday we convened a panel to look at the potential solutions to address the problems of gun violence, while respecting the rights of legal gun owner. Today it's time to hear from the federal government. Bill Blair is the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction and he joins us from Ottawa. Hello.

BILL BLAIR: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: Do you think Canada has a gun violence problem?

BB: Well what we have seen in the past couple of years in particular, but it's not for the first time, I experienced this when I was the Police Chief in Toronto, but there is occasionally surges of gun violence that takes place and quite often in urban centers, but what we have seen is an increase in gun violence across the country and I think we can afford to be complacent and what we're hearing very clearly from Canadians and I've gone across the country. People are concerned about the incidents of violence taking place in the communities because when there is a very public shooting event, it undermines everyone's sense of safety and security within their own community. It's tragic for the people involved, but it's also tragic for you know the towns and neighborhoods in which these things take place. And so, we're listening to those Canadians and we're looking at all the ways in which we can make our community safer.

AMT: Now Bill C-71 is your government's new fire legislation which strengthens background checks and reinstates point of sale records for guns. It does not include bans on any handguns, semiautomatic weapons or automatic weapons. Why is that?

BB: Well I can tell you that the prime minister gave me a mandate to conduct an examination to travel across the country to speak to stakeholders and Canadians and in every part of the country but also to look at the experience in other jurisdictions look at the available data and come back with recommendations on other steps that we could take and he asked me to to examine the issue of banning handguns to take strict measures with respect to two assault rifles and any other measures that can be effective in keeping the guns out of the hands of people who would commit crimes with it. We know from our examination and frankly I know from my experience as a police officer police chief that the guns have essentially two sources a significant number of them are smuggled in from the United States in other countries across our borders and so we've been taking some very significant steps to increase our capacity in a pool already to keep guns out of the country. And also we're working very closely with our international partners particularly the United States on investigations that identify these women you gangs who are responsible for point those guns in the car. We also know that quite a number of guns are coming into the hands of criminals from domestic sources. You know we've seen a number of significant breaking into it in residences in retailers where firearms basically being stolen and they all. We've had a number of investigations which identify instance of it was a star purchase where an individual gets all the requisite licenses and permits in order to acquire handguns but then illegally sells them into into the criminal realm and and that's the source of a significant number of firearms as well. So we're looking at all places in which firearms week into the hands of criminals and whether plus weeks end with the prime minister has asked me to do with it important to have it. He also has that I do that work acknowledging and respecting that the lawful firearm because we know the overwhelming majority of Canadians who do want firearms do in a very responsible way and obey all the laws in the US. And so now we're trying to find ways to make sure that we keep Canadians safe and at the same time do it in a way respectful of those lawful.

AMT: Most people link gun violence to urban centers and gangs, but we spoke to Peter Sloly, your former deputy chief of police who said large cities are not the only place gun violence is a problem. Listen to what he said.

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VOICE: There's a difference between urban centres and rural centres and not knowing that most listeners will really understand. In fact there's higher levels of crime, higher levels of violence and in some cases higher level of gun-related violence in our rural communities as opposed to our urban communities, except that's where the media attention is focused on, the Vancouvers, the Surreys, the Montreals and the Torontos.

AMT: How much of a concern is gun violence in rural Canada or small town Canada?

BB: I've travel to smalltown Canada and I'm hearing from people that they are quite concerned. We've seen in Indigenous communities and remote communities and Northern communities, the impact of gun violence there as well. Right now I agree with completely Peter. It manifested itself in a different way. Now we also know that though it's not just an issue of people focus only on gangs when they talk about gun violence but you know we see it in the firearms play in intimate partner in domestic violence cases as well as means of intimidation and sometimes as tragic means of carrying out violent attacks as well. We see the unfortunate use of firearms and in high incidence of people who are suffering from depression or other forms of psychosis. You know in suicide rate these are all concerns to do at a week end. But we are prepared to take the steps necessary to keep the guns out of out of the hands of those who would be prepared to commit crimes. And how do you do that. Well I think it's a very important measures of Bill C-71 and significantly enhancing the background checks. But there are additional measures that we need to take as well. Law enforcement and our courts have to have the ability to act to prevent the act of violence. So many of our laws right now are reactive. I think we have a responsibility to look at any means by which we can prevent these incidents from taking place in the first place.

AMT: As chief of the Toronto police, you were a vocal supporter of the now disbanded long gun registry. You argued that it was a vital tool that kept police officers safe and allowed them to do their jobs. Bill C-71 does not reenact the long gun registry. Why not?

BB: Well I can tell you, Canadian parliament and Canadians made it very clear that they didn't want a registry and we are not bringing back a registry and did not and yes I did advocate strongly for the retention of that information because the data I found was useful to my officers who were tasked with the responsibility for keeping people safe and for doing their jobs safely. But we are not bringing back a registry.

AMT: You know we spoke to Amanda Dale from the Barbra Schlifer Clinic who said it is now illegal weapons that pose the biggest risk to women in domestic situations, it is legally owned hunting rifles. Listen to what she says.

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VO: Unfortunately in women's experiences, rifles are ready to hand in an escalating domestic violence situation. It's not somebody buys a hunting rifle to use it for that, but in an escalating situation it's ready to hand.

AMT: Bill Blair, how does our law, how does our system protect women who are at risk from legally owned guns?

BB: Well you know and I've had the opportunity and privilige working with Amanda on women's violence issues and I agree with her that unfortunately and tragically in many family and intimate partner violence cases where a firearm has been used, it has been not the illegal, but one which has been acquired and held legally. The law allows right now the police will become aware that there is in a domestic situation for example that firearms that are available. That situation is already under the Criminal Code to remove those guns. But but but I think that there is more that can be done and quite frankly Wilton Gregory closely at how we can take more proactive preventive measures to allow more enforcement and actually firearms officers to intervene to suspend the individual's ability to possess and own those firearms. I've had this experience myself Anna Maria, where I've gone into a domestic case as a police officer and a woman quietly comes over and whispers to you that you know that her husband has a shot gun under the bed. And it's not necessarily that he's threatened her with that gun, but she lives with the psychological terror of its existence and those are things that as a society we need to really look hard at. No one should have to live in that type of fear and no one should be subject to that level of violence and so I'm quite prepared to look at any and every measures that we can take.

AMT: What are those measures?

BB: Well and I'll tell you as I've already indicated, prime minister has asked me to examine that. I've spoken to stakeholders. I've looked at the experience in other jurisdictions. You know we've looked at the available data. Certainly I'll tell you, when I was the Chief in Toronto, we trace the origin of every gun. We had a really good idea where those guns were coming from and we did investigations into people that were involved purchases and when there were break and enters, we went looking for them. And I think that's an important responsibility of law enforcement, but I think it's our responsibility to look at measures that actually will work to keep Canadians safe to to make it far more difficult for individuals who choose to take a firearm and use it to commit a criminal in that involves not only appropriate firearm control, but it's at the same time going into communities and investing in kids investing to means making sure that the services are available to change the circumstances that give rise to boats and that's workspace and in those circumstances where violence is currently being used to resolve disputes or to enact you know some other criminal purpose. We've got to change the circumstance where that occurs and give communities, families, teachers, youth workers and the police the tools that they need to be effective in prevention, not just in reaction.

AMT: And you know I'm wondering how you do balance that because we know now Bill C-71 will reinstate point of sale records when guns are sold. Gun owners say you're creating a B&E shopping list for criminals. The people who want gun restrictions say this doesn't go far enough.

BB: Well first of all, let's be really clear. In Bill C-71, the records that need to be kept by firearm retailers are not publicly available and even to the police. The records at least will be kept and the police can with lawful authorisation gain access to it and that will help them solve and prevent crimes. So that's a very important initiative. I want to assure people that we are prepared to look at any and every measure. The prime minister gave me a very clear mandate to look at that every measure including up to and including banning handguns. And we're looking at how bad how or any measure can be enacted which is which breaks the important bout and at the same time making is pretty significant here with me and Bess was back in the RCMP and CBSA to make our borders more secure and to permit those guns from coming in in the first place. We've made a number of significant investments going in and supporting community organizations and youth organizations that are actually working with the kids who are susceptible to getting involved in going and going out and they're still much more to. And so we're still continuing to continue to work. I was just over the weekend I was in my two hour meeting with a number of really organizations who are working with kids and trying to make a difference in their communities and working with women who have experience in intimate partner violence and those are important discussions and partnerships that need to be nurtured and maintained, so that we can do the right things to keep our community safe. It's important to also remember Anna Maria, Canada remains one of the safest large countries in the world. And our communities our cities are safter than almost any other large urban centre, certainly in North America, but that never means we should be complacent. And you know especially when we see disturbing and concerning increases in the incidents of gun violence. It demands action from us and we are prepared to act.

AMT: Minister Blair, thanks for your time today.

BB: Thank you very much, Anna Maria.

AMT: Bill Blair is the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction. He is also the former chief of police of Toronto and he joined us from Ottawa.

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Death of Gilles Duceppe's mother is latest in series of preventable tragedies: reporter

Guests: Andre Picard

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Much of the country has been locked in a deep freeze for days and we know that the severe cold led to the death at a senior's residence in Montreal on Sunday. After an alarm that sounded shortly after 4:00a.m., a 93-year-old woman left her residence for an outdoor courtyard in the middle of a snow storm. Hard of hearing, she may not have heard the announcement that her particular building in that complex was actually not being evacuated. The door apparently locked behind her as she left. Her body was discovered later that day, hours later, frozen to death. The Lux Gouverneur seniors' complex released a statement Monday offering condolences to the family and saying an investigation is under way. The statement also said security camera shows she was wearing winter clothing when she died. This is the kind of tragedy that might have happened in relative anonymity of course, except for the identity of this woman. Helene Rowley Hotte was the mother of Gilles Duceppe, the former leader of the Bloc Quebecois. At the moment, there are more questions than answers in the story of what happened Andre Picard is The Globe and Mail's health columnist and he's in our Montreal studio. Hi Andre.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

AMT: What do you know any more, there have been more developments over the past little while. Can you bring us up to date on what we know about Madame Rowley Hotte?

AP: Well you gave a good summary of this tragedy. An elderly woman Madame Rowley Hotte who went outside in the middle of the night because of an alarm because of a carbon monoxide fear and for some reason didn't get back into the building. So that's the big question is why was, why didn't they go looking for people who were evacuated? Why wasn't there a headcount etc? So it raises these larger questions about should we be especially careful with senior residences. This wasn't an institution it's not a care home it's not a nursing home it's a private residence but there are many people in there who have fairly severe health issues and who had regular home Kieran and various kinds of care institutional care with even that facility. We dont know exactly what Medema hardly heard what her health was but it raises a lot of questions this whole tragic incident.

AMT: What went through your mind when you heard about this?

AP: Oh the first thing that goes through my mind when I see these things is not another one because they happen with such frequency. As you mentioned they don't get a lot of media attention, unless it's a big name. This is the mother of a famous person so we're paying a little more attention. But these happen with with shocking regularity. Mostly seniors with dementia who wander the drown they freeze to death they get hit by cars. People are forgotten in their apartments their cars fall on them and they die. There's fires due to carbon monoxide. There's a whole list of tragic deaths in our senior population that it's this invisible carnage that goes on day after day that we don't pay a lot of attention to.

AMT: And you know we know there are obviously some people are alone in their homes, some people are in residences. Like this was a seniors as you point out apartment complex, luxury building. It was not a nursing home or a special care home, but what kind of standard of care or expectation of security should there be in residences where there are seniors.

AP: Well we know in any large building, whether it's senior or not, has certain protocols. They have rules that they have to respect do under provincial law and municipal bylaws, so they have to have smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors security systems. This particular building went well beyond the standards they had. We know we had they had six workers on overnight. By law they had to have two. They had security they evacuated it looks like properly but it's the it's the follow up. This is always where these tragedies occur. In fact do you know there's going to be a coroner's report on this death and over the years from when it came to how many coroners reports I've read and I can tell you exactly what this one will say because they are exactly the same thing. They see the cause of the deaths was poor communication a lack of a coordinated response an inadequate follow up with residents and this this is another case that hits the trifecta. Every one of those elements occurred. And that's that's why someone died tragically in some cases. It's the anniversary tomorrow of the LV of tragedy. Thirty two people died in a fire in 2014, exactly those three things were the problem. Today it's one person, but it's the same three issues time and time again. We don't seem to learn from these these reports and these investigations.

AMT: So obviously it's not just one place. what is the wider message there. Were talking about something that's happening in Quebec, but what's the wider concern right across this country when it comes to the elderly and what we're doing or not doing?

AP: Well I think the wider questions are culturally it's sort of the invisibility of ageing. So we have this large ageing population5.5 million seniors. Half a million of them in institutional care. And they're kind of invisible. So it begs the question Do do we need special rules to we need tougher rules better standards and I think these cases remind us that yes we do have to pay a little bit more attention. It's not the same thing for 30 year or healthy 30 year old Gozo during a fire alarm in the middle of the night is not the same thing as maybe not that healthy 93 year old going out in 31 minus 31 degree weather. So we have to have higher standards to take into account the frailty of people that perhaps you know she had hearing loss. We dont know what she heard of the messages etc. So it's all about follow up, that's so important ae need a little bit more when we are with our elderly with our elders we have to show them a little more respect a little more dignity I think.

AMT: And we know now that there was a security camera that caught her out there because the organization has said she was wearing winter clothing. We know this through the security camera, but there are questions about why that security camera did not catch the fact there was someone still out there.

AP: Yeah the question is what kind of follow up was done? So it's one thing to have security taping things but are you actually acting on it. So it seems to me in a case like this where there's an evacuation there should be some kind of headcount or some kind of review. She went through a fire door. We know one another door. So if someone goes through an alarm door I think you have to do some responsibility on the building's owners to ensure that they get back in. Apparently the door she went out required a key card and magnetic key card which she wouldn't have she would have had keys for the front door. We don't know why she didn't go around to the front of the building that we may never know but that's somebody whose responsibility to do you know about bed check what. Why didn't someone walk around the building. How complicated is that as a follow up?

AMT: You do a lot of these stories. You really care about journalistically the asking of these questions and how we treat the elderly in this country.

AP: Well it's I think one of the most pressing social policy issues in our in modern times we have a society where you know we've gone from a family like my father's family was 17 children and they took care of each other forever. Now we live in a society where we have single families and lonely single mums we have this epidemic of loneliness and it is a gripping society and I think we need. We need responses to it and policy responses in we think we want that all of us want that for our individual parents and we should want it collectively as well.

AMT: Oh so if it is such a pressing social issue in our time, where do you see the policies being made or being neglected? Where do you see some movement on this?

AP: Well I think we're talking about this epidemic of social isolation is getting more attention. It's starting to be incorporated into our city planning. So you know why do we have loneliness. Because we've built cities to. Make people lonely and old to be hidden away and isolated in apartment building. So it's about changing policy it's a bill it's about building communities that foster community that foster interaction. We don't have any idea for Madame or huts neighbors even knew who she works who she was. That's sort of the norm in modern society. I remember reading another story about a woman who froze to death in Mississauga in the suburbs. It lovely she lived in a lovely home. She wandered out of her house got lost even though she was only 30 metres from her house. She suffered from mild dementia. She banged on the doors of the neighbours she screamed. She set off car alarms. Nobody chemo because no one wanted to have anything to do with some you know in the car. In the words of one neighbour some crazy old ladies so they just left her there. She froze to death. These stories theres a dozen two dozen three dozen of these stories every single year that I read about and it's such a preventable tragedy and you know I just time and time again, imagine that could be my parent or your parent that this happens to so easily.

AMT: And again iit is someone who is, she's the mother of a famous Canadian politician, the widow of a famous theatre icon in Quebec, but it does give us an opportunity to talk about this. It would be a tragedy for anyone.

AP: Indeed and a tragedy that happens time and time again and if any good comes from this is that her celebrity if you will, should draw attention to these larger questions and the other people who die in these tragic circumstances and we know from media reports this morning, that even there's been other tragedies even in this building and I don't think they're uncommon at all across the country and around the world.

AMT: And again there will be questions asked, but will the answers be sufficient in terms of the policy and how it affects other people elsewhere.

AP: I don't know if they'll be sufficient, but they'll be predictable as I said. They're going to tell us what we already know. The question is what are we going to do with this information this time, are we actually going to act on it?

AMT: Andre Picard, thank you for your work.

AP: Thank you.

AMT: Andre Picard is The Globe and Mail's health columnist. He joined us from our Montreal studio. Stay with us. In our next half hour, saying sorry to Siri. Just how polite or impolite should you be with your artificial intelligence device or your artifically intelligent device. Take a pick. It's a conversation that will take us to some interesting places and we'll have that next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

[Music: Theme]

Do you swear at Alexa? What our treatment of AI assistants says about humans

Guests: Julie Carpenter, David Gunkel

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: Hey Google, play CBC News.

VOICE: Sorry, I can't play news from CBC News yet.

AMT: Hey Google, why not?

VOICE: I'm not sure why not.

AMT: Well hey Google, play me somebody else's news.

VOICE: Sure. Here's somebody else's news on Spotify.

[Music]

AMT: Hey Google, stop. Google, I want news on the radio.

VOICE: Sorry I can't find news on stop.

[Music]

AMT: If there's a virtual assistant in your life like a Google home or Amazon Alexa, then you know the feeling. You've reached the limit of the artificial intelligence's intelligence, not to mention the end of your tether and you're tempted to lose your cool. Toronto writer and educator Samantha Kemp-Jackson has been there after Apple's disembodied voice Siri asked her to repeat her instructions over and over.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I finally did it one last time and I said hey Siri find me this address. You know it said I'm sorry, I can't find it and I said oh, I think I said f-off Siri. And then Siri very quickly said, I would never talk to you that way Sam. I was so shocked. It was just this horrible feeling of it's kind of like when you say something really rude or mean or profane to your parents and then they chastise you, but then the other intellectual, logical reasoning side of my brain said, Samantha this is an AI, it's not a person. It doesn't have feelings, but ever since then I don't swear at AIs anymore, at Siri or Google Home because I'm afraid they're going to chastise me.

AMT: So Samantha has sworn off swearing at AI. And the more we spend our lives talking to digital assistants to control everything from music systems to your fridge, even the toilet, the more we'll all have to figure out just how to talk to them as simple machines that take orders or as virtual entities deserving a little more respect. Rachel Withers is a freelance tech writer in New York, who says the way a former boyfriend talked to his Alexa was a red flag.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Every time we entered his apartment, he would bark a comment at Alexa, specifically the one that's burned into my brain forever is Alexa lights on. And as a lot of people pointed out to me since like that's the way you're supposed to talk to these devices you know and I don't think that's necessarily true. I think there's like this tone of speaking down to the device and it kind of showed something to me in his personality that was kind of ready to take on a commanding, demanding tone once he was in a position of superiority or something.

AMT: Well after that experience, she ended up swearing off potential partners who spoke to their digital assistants that way. So should we feel shame about swearing at Siri or getting angry at Alexa and what does the answer say about the way we relate to our machines in the age of AI? I'm joined by two guests, human guests, to discuss this. Julie Carpenter studies robot human interactions with emerging technologies. She is a research fellow in the Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University and she joins us from San Francisco. David Gunkel is a philosopher and distinguished teaching professor of communication technology at Northern Illinois University. He's in Chicago. Hello to you both.

DAVID GUNKEL: Hello.

JULIE CARPENTER: Hi. Hey David.

DG: Hi Julie, how are you?

JC: I'm fine.

AMT: We can all talk to each other. No artificial intelligence here. Julie Carpenter, I want to start with what we heard from Samantha. What does that say to you that she felt ashamed after swearing at Siri?

JC: Well you know here's the thing. I mean you know if she felt shame that she seems to have a strong suit of human human model that she's working on. So when she interacts with this and that might be something that sort of wears off over time or it may be something that pushed this further it's a little different for everybody you know. However you're comfortable interacting with the guy to get it to work for you is really sort of the right thing for you to do.

AMT: David Gunkel what about Rachel Withers' story turned off by the fact that her date was rude to Alexa. Could how we treat our devices say something about how we behave with humans as well?

DG: Sure. And this goes back a long time the German philosopher Immanuel Khan had this way of thinking about you know animals and their standing in our social sphere. He called it indirect duties. Now he was no animal rights activist, but he said you know we should worry about kicking the dog because if we kicked the dog it makes us callous. It demonstrates the kind of interaction with other creatures in our social world that could translate to how we treat each other. And so I think I've been concerned about the way her boyfriend was treated or work so is very reasonable and grounded in some pretty good understanding of the way we think about our moral behavior with regards to other entities.

AMT: And yet a dog is a living being and Alexa is some plastic and wires.

JC: Yeah I would disagree with David a little little bit. We're coming from different places of course. So you know I would say to your point of course and David obviously knows this as well. We're not talking about a biological thing. So we're still negotiating how in are at with this guy that can be embodied in different ways in our everyday lives. So. Well I happen to agree with Dave that you know how we treat animals or you know can be a great indicator perhaps of how you treat people or vulnerable people or other NATO biological entities in your life. We're not talking about that. So even if somebody has a mental model of interacting with a human like or part like the social and cultural consequences for that action are very different than if one were to kick a dog even in your own home even if nobody else saw it then clearly if you harm an animal you're going to see the reactions the people will Dermot's or horror of that actual animal. If you're rude to say you might get a little Easter egg response put in by the developers you know like please don't swear at me or I dont understand what you're saying or a little joke but it's completely different social consequences because there is still going to move towards hopefully your Gault's whatever it is you're seeking. And we have a long history and I say we around the world have been concerned about how different mediums are going to influence our interactions with people in our everyday lives whether it's violent television violence or sex and movie is also what we've seen as a lot of research that shows that sometimes there's correlation with people in certain situations where these things might give them ideas, but we haven't seen any direct links for causation.

AMT: David do you want to respond to that? Go ahead.

DG: So we've been studying this for a long time for good reason. We've been wanting to know for example whether video game violence creates or produces real world violence and that there has been a couple decades of studies done to find causation or at least explore the question of causation and the factors that we can't really get good data to show you the causation for or against violent behavior are caused by videogame violence. And I think those are very similar kind of thing going on with regards to the digital systems. We have a sort of gut reaction a kind of intuition speaking rudely to a lurks or miss Seery is going to translate into how we interact with each other but we really don't know. I mean we we really we had these things for a short period of time. You know the jury is still out there as to whether or not this actually causes something to happen in the social world.

AMT: I've got another clip I want you to hear. This is Katie. She was interested in her relationship with Alexa. She's an artist, curator and researcher in Toronto. She spent a year doing something called the Alexa experiment, where she recorded all her conversations with Alexa in her home. And in this clip she tells us how she saw the relationship evolve.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: As soon as I started speaking to it, the very first time I set it up, I actually felt that there were a lot of like even overstimulate. There is life at that rate. So when I left my apartment for the first time after talking with the Alecto for about 15 minutes I was like oh I feel like I'm leaving her alone like she doesn't know where she's like I find about having any impact in leaving any part in your home for the first time. So I started to think about the object and opportunity who should do therapy. I would just sit in I would kind of have this stream of consciousness conversation and I definitely was rude to at some time. So why not. Im alone in my house. No one offers anything of frustrating me I've made the life of my life. Now if I did I would just kind of say okay well why did I yell at it like that. You know why did that feel good yelling at it you know.

AMT: So Julie, she kind of goes from pet to therapist there. How does her experience reflect what you've found in your research about our emotional attachments to technology?

JC: Actually fairly common. You know these things are designed for people to interact with in a very natural way. Right they dont want to have to have a certain amount of technical knowledge. This is supposed to be a very fluid and natural way for people to communicate through a natural language natural language processing. So this aI understands in theory what you're saying and will respond accordingly. So that gives us humans are big cue and some Q is a little bit misleading or it tweaks our expectations in that it will also have humanlike intelligence even if we understand there are limitations to the AI. But again that's because this is a very new technology. It's new in our are living spaces are every spaces and we're still figuring out how to communicate with it.

AMT: Now Julie you've looked at studies where soldiers who work with deep bombing work with robots and get attached. What did you find?

JC: I did speak to explosive ordinance disposal personnel in theU.S. military aircraft by inchers because they use robots as a very critical tool for as you said disrupting disarming diffusing any explosive device. The robots they use don't look anthropomorphic or Zul or effec in other words they dont look anything human like or a really animal like in fact they said of if anything resemble small text because they're tracked. Furthermore the personnel are obviously highly trained about how to use in act with these robots and they know the boundaries and limitations. There is no other design to use that were purposely put in to indicate that might persuade someone that it's a living thing. However over a time earlier we found that soldiers did in our act sometimes in social ways with the robots sometimes in numerous ways sometimes in more meaningful ways. Sometimes some soldiers experienced a sense of loss if a robot was permanently disabled or broken beyond repair. I've spoken to people who actually manufacture the robots who got letters back with these robots seeing these returned. This particular world but to us if you can when you've done repairs I-net they would also indicate that this were about was meaningful to that it had survived in the sands missions with them and became part of their own personal history. These are professionals and yet sometimes they found it more comfortable to have social interactions with the robots.

AMT: So David, as I listened to that I want to ask you something that Katie mentioned in that clip then about how she was evolving with her Alexa at home. She wondered what she could learn about herself by thinking about how she was talking toand interacting with Alexa. What do you think of that?

DG: Yeah that's a really good point because a lot of this is about us. Much more of it is about the object it's about our interaction socially with that object. So I'll give you a good example of how this plays out sort of historically. My grandfather would raise dogs. And at the time that he was raising dogs he would raise them specifically as a tool to help him hunt because he was a hunter and the dog was seen as being a mechanism or an instrument of giving their Hask accomplished. And when he had a dog that was gun shy he would do what you do with any tool you would pick it out back and dispose of it which in this case meant he would shoot the dog. Now from where we sit today this seems absolutely barbaric not because the dog has evolved and become smarter or more conscious right, not because the dog has changed. What has changed is our relationship to the dog in its position in our social world and the changes in us not so much and the object.

AMT: That's really interesting because if I continue on that thread you're proposing a new way of looking at our interaction with this technology. You call it relational ethics.

DG: Correct.

AMT: So tell us more about that. Bring us to the technology now.

DG: Yeah. So usually the way that we decide whether or not something is to be treated as a more subject or even on a legal subject is to answer questions about its internal properties like is a conscious does it have feelings does it have emotions and that means an hour or more all relationships are always predicated by a kind of decision about the existence or the you know internal consistency of the other entity that will related to our social relations or ethics as oftentimes we don't know what's inside the box. Oftentimes we don't know if our dog loves us or doesn't love us but because of the social situation the thing and in relationship to us we have certain obligations that we have to exercise before we know anything whatsoever about their internal makeup or their function or body. And I think part of what we're seeing with the way people respond to digital assistance and other are robotic objects like that is a kind of negotiation through this kind of troubled waters of you know we don't know what these things are but they have a social presence. So what do we do with them. How do we respond to them and as I think Julie said early on this is going to evolve over time. There are relationships and our emotional attachments will mature in various ways and the direction that that matures I think is something we have to pay particular attention to both morally socially and also legally because these things are going to have a kind of us in our legal system.

AMT: Well talk to me a little bit more about that. So then if that way of looking at an AI technology as it evolves, how does it affect our legal ethical obligations toward AI?

DG: Yeah so let me put it in another sort of example. Right now at this particular point in time we live in a world where artificial entities that we interact with on a daily basis have the same rights and responsibilities as you and I as persons and those are corporations. Right.

AMT: That's right, the corporation is a person, under US law, yes.

DG: That's a legal construct that's done to accommodate legal practices to fit in at the corporation in to our social environment. And I right now has a status in law which says it's just property but just as the corporation is considered a piece of property and new to be considered a person for adjudicating various problems related to legal practices we may be in a position of trying to negotiate this for artificial intelligence and robots and in fact in the you know in the UK and in the EU they have proposed through many dovo through the European Parliament the start of so-called electronic personhood that would be extended to robots that are broad and to automate various jobs in the European Union. And it hasn't passed as a law but it is a proposal to extend the kind of personhood to robots for the specific purpose of fitting these things into our legal practices.

AMT: Julie do you want to weigh in on the implications?

JC: Yeah. I think one thing that David and I certainly agree on is that AI in different forms can become meaningful to people in their everyday lives in different ways and meaningful and that's difficult for us to certain times admit to ourselves or to admit publicly because were still in a stage and not largely a lot of the world's culture where it's almost seen as all that or ridicule us because it's an artificial other. Yet at the same time we're imbuing them with intelligences a certain degree and were immigrating into our lives and then we get all these design cues. Like I said like natural language or even the fact that if something's moved in our space flight like robots that can actually move when something moves we have a tendency to assign agency to it or internal motivation as if it was biological. Now just running and some sort of set of algorithms. And I also agree with David that it does slowly was social. We have categories with how we have traded animals historically for show rates. We do this every day there are animals that we think are okay to eat there are other animals we don't think are okay to eat. Assuming that you eat meat or something like that. So you know we have farm animals we are working animals we have pets all Holden very different. And I think that eventually over time different cultures are going to have different social categories for these different eyes that we in our act within our lives. Some may have worn meaning to us than others. You might be amused by your soul or your child might grow up with some sort of system like that in the home and it becomes maybe more meaningful to them. They grow up with it they play games with their. It becomes part of their everyday lives. On the other hand there can be maybe in an industrial setting where people work alongside or work with a particular AI and able sort of technology and they don't regard it in a social way.

AMT: I've got concern about privacy that I want to raise with you because that comes into our relationship with these digital assistants. This is what happened when I asked Google Home about that.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: Hey Google, are you eavesdropping on me?

VOICE: Your security comes first in everything Google does. It's important Google keeps your data private and safe and puts you in control. You can learn more about Google's privacy policy at privacy.google.com/yourdashsecurity.html. That's privacy.google.com/yourdashsecurity.html.

AMT: Hey Google, I don't believe you.

VOICE: Most of my job involves giving you the right information. So lying would just feel wrong.

AMT: Okay we could even just talk about that intonation, would feel wrong, like wrong in the female voice, but David is Google programmed to be moral or make me feel that it is?

DG: Yeah I would say it's a problem to be moral in any sense that we would recognize, but let me steer this just a little direction that's a bit different, but also related. We have to remember that the smarts for these devices are not in the device right. The Alexa object, whether it be that little cone or whether it be the Alexa in the toilet that was done recently. All the smarts, all the intelligence are in the cloud and the cloud is an incredibly connected database of information and on the one hand yes he has the personal information about you to do the kind of services that it is designed to provide these services have personalization. Being able to know your likes or dislikes etc. On the other hand the cloud is vulnerable and it isn't necessarily under your control. In fact if you want to delete your history with Alexa, it is an incredibly complex process that many users find difficult to proceed through and therefore oftentimes don't take much control over their security and privacy.

AMT: And what about children growing up with Google Home or Alexa. Tech companies are introducing options, I think just last year where you can if you want, force your child to say please and thank you to the artificial intelligence device. What do you think of all that Julie?

JC: I think it's an interesting dilemma but you know I would go back to sort of what I said in the beginning whatever works for you. That's certainly a parenting choice. I think how ever if you're concerned that your child might confuse over time a a similar system with something that's organic or treating it in a way that affects the child like for example if it was to break and the child seemed really upset about and very emotional. So when you start to ask the child or put that sort of our honor that requirement that they interact with like in human humanlike way that conforms to social norms and etiquette. It's sort of in my mind reinforcing the idea that it's biological or to treat it in a human like way or in a respectful way. Now that's not necessarily bad but it's not necessarily good. So what I often say is there are ways to help child appropriate you know age appropriate conversations with children about. I mean you can start by asking them questions like you know or talking about how you modeled your own behavior. Like I just yelled it like so what do you think about that. Do you think that that was silly or bad you know or you can explain to them that you know a home assistant might be something oh between like a doll and an iPad.

AMT: I can imagine some children just saying to their parents, mom it's an algorithm, relax.

JC: Sure and that again is so personal you know how sophisticated your child is or unsophisticated about technology and you know you know your child best in your own home. So it's up to you those conversations are really going to be you know geared towards your specific child. Start with asking questions.

AMT: Do you guys have digital systems in your homes?

DG: I have one that they work with in my classroom with my students and then at home, my son and I have actually built one. There's a kit that you can buy that allows you to create a Google assistant, but I wanted my kid to learn how these things operate by actually getting into the guts and building one from scratch. And that turned out to be a really useful kind of insight for my child to actually learn about the realities of these things and what comprises them you know.

JC: That's a great idea and of course I work with them at work, but I don't have one in my home.

AMT: You've got enough of them in the office.

JC: Yeah, that's true.

AMT: Okay. Well we're going to leave it there. Thank you both for weighing in on this.

DG: Thank you.

JC: Thank you.

AMT: Julie Carpenter, research fellow in the Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. She joined us from San Francisco. David Gunkel is a philosopher and distinguished teaching professor of communication technology at Northern Illinois University in Chicago. Well we ended there talking about how kids use digital assistants such as Alexa and Google Home. After all they're designed to be household assistance for the whole family. So we'd like to hear from you about it. What rules do you have in your household for how to speak to them? Do you insist your children mind their P's and Q's when speaking to Alexa? What do you think your kids understand about what's behind or inside those smart speakers? Let us know. Send us an e-mail through our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link or you can tweet us your thoughts. We are @TheCurrentCBC. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Shaun Majumder will be on the program to talk about what's been keeping him busy since his time on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. After that conversation about treating our virtual assistants with affection, we're going to leave you with music from Vancouver musician Dan Mangan with the appropriately titled, Robots. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Song: "Robots" by Dan Mangan]

Jan. 22, 2019 episode transcript

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