More than a year ago, the federal government published the Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible
Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems.(1) These are systems such as ChatGPT,
DALL·E 2 and Midjourney. While these offer many advantages, such as the ability to write e-mails, answer
complex questions, produce images or produce realistic videos, they carry significant health and safety risks,
can propagate prejudice and have serious social repercussions, particularly when used by malicious agents.
It’s telling that even the pioneers of artificial intelligence are wary of the risks it presents. In early 2023, over
350 AI industry leaders signed a declaration(2) urging the international community to make it a priority to
(1) https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/voluntary-code-conduct-responsible-development-and-managementadvanced-generative-ai-systems (2) https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
90 THE TORONTO-DOMINION BANK PROXY CIRCULAR
mitigate the “extinction” risk posed by AI, placing it on par with a pandemic or a nuclear war. Since this
moratorium has failed to materialize, the urgency to act is arguably even greater now, as Joshua [sic] Bengio,
one of the signatories of this request for a moratorium, expressed in an interview with Les Affaires.
(1)
Aware of the importance of a rigorous framework to manage and mitigate these risks, the federal government
invited companies to adhere to the Code, which describes:
• the measures that should be applied pending the adoption of regulations under the Artificial Intelligence
Act;
• as well as the additional measures that should be taken by any company developing or managing the
operations of such a system made accessible to a wide public, i.e. systems with a wider range of potentially
harmful or inappropriate uses.
The purpose of this proposal is to invite the Board of Directors to decide whether the bank should adhere to
this Code of Conduct.