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(Seeing as I already posted an AI-is-dangerous article, here's one that shows the benefits of AI.)

Inside a bustling unit at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto, one of Shirley Bell's patients was suffering from a cat bite and a fever, but otherwise appeared fine — until an alert from an AI-based early warning system showed he was sicker than he seemed.

While the nursing team usually checked blood work around noon, the technology flagged incoming results several hours beforehand. That warning showed the patient's white blood cell count was "really, really high," recalled Bell, the clinical nurse educator for the hospital's general medicine program.

The cause turned out to be cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection. Without prompt treatment, it can lead to extensive tissue damage, amputations and even death. Bell said the patient was given antibiotics quickly to avoid those worst-case scenarios, in large part thanks to the team's in-house AI technology, dubbed Chartwatch.

"There's lots and lots of other scenarios where patients' conditions are flagged earlier, and the nurse is alerted earlier, and interventions are put in earlier," she said. "It's not replacing the nurse at the bedside; it's actually enhancing your nursing care."

As investors weigh OpenAI’s valuation, they might consider the humble paperclip. A cautionary tale about corporate profit maximizers building a robot that so excels in producing the office supply that it wipes out humanity might seem far-fetched. But a single-minded capitalist could make the economically rational decision to bear such a risk. As OpenAI races towards a fundraising that could value it at $150 billion, the implicit promise is that gains enormous enough to make that danger thinkable are on the horizon. That itself underscores the barriers to growth.

The paperclip story goes like this. One day, engineers at ACME Office Supplies unveil a hyper-sophisticated AI machine with one goal: produce as many paperclips as possible. The incomparable silicon intellect chases this task to the furthest extreme, converting every molecule on Earth into paperclips and promptly ending all life.

Profit-hungry OpenAI investors like Microsoft might be assumed, like ACME, to only value short-term gains, inviting the risk that they build their own Paperclip Maximizer. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, says that he is mindful of the risk. His company’s structure is meant to limit bad incentives, capping profit available to investors. Such protections are worth an asterisk now: a ceiling on profit was set in 2019 at a 100 times return for initial investors. OpenAI initially expected to lower it over time. Instead, the company's latest fundraising now hinges on changing that structure, including by removing the cap, Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be bracing for an earful from his caucus when Liberal MPs gather in Nanaimo, B.C. today to plot their strategy for the coming election year.

It will be the first time he faces them as a group since MPs departed Ottawa in the spring.

Still stinging from a devastating byelection loss earlier this summer, the caucus is now also reeling from news that their national campaign director has resigned and the party can no longer count on the NDP to stave off an early election.

"They should be giving the prime minister a rough ride," said strategist Ginny Roth, who served as director of communications for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's leadership campaign.

She's skeptical they will, though.

A year's worth of respiratory virus data for Alberta reveals, once again, COVID-19 is far deadlier than the flu.

The death toll due to the two illnesses, combined, topped 900 over the past year.

More than four times as many Albertans died due to COVID compared to influenza.

Alberta's respiratory dashboard shows flu was responsible for 177 deaths while 732 people died of COVID-19 (between Aug. 27, 2023, and Aug. 24, 2024).

"This is continual evidence that COVID is not just another flu," said Craig Jenne, professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary, noting influenza is not a benign virus.

The NDP is leaping to the defence of Montréal byelection candidate Craig Sauvé after he was criticized for using a Palestinian flag on an election pamphlet.

"Craig Sauvé included a Maple Leaf on the leaflet in question, and frequently poses with the Canadian flag and Quebec flags — both of which he deeply loves and respects," a statement from the party says.

The pamphlet that has prompted criticism from the Conservatives and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) depicts Sauvé on the cover with a Palestinian flag flying behind him.

Nearly three quarters of dentists are accepting patients through the new Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) but dentist participation rates still vary widely from province to province.

Data obtained by CBC News shows the CDCP participation rate for dentists is lowest in the Maritimes, Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In New Brunswick, only 40 per cent of dentists are accepting CDCP patients. In the three territories, only 38 per cent of dentists take part in the program.

The provincial and territorial data was provided to CBC News after four weeks of repeated requests to Health Canada and Health Minister Mark Holland's office.

CBC Radio's What on Earth travelled to Yukon this summer to explore how a warming climate has threatened chinook salmon, endangering not just the species but a cultural keystone for these Indigenous communities. There, it found that an unprecedented seven-year moratorium on fishing mandated by Canada's federal and Alaska's state governments, combined with other conservation efforts, may be netting some success.

This summer about 24,000 chinook were counted moving up the Yukon River at the border with Alaska. That's compared to historic lows of 12,000 and 15,000 the last two seasons, says Elizabeth MacDonald, a biologist and fisheries manager for the Council of Yukon First Nations.

The fishing moratorium has only been in place for five months.

On Tuesday, “gig workers” who drive for platforms like Uber and Lyft in British Columbia gained the right to be paid a minimum wage for their work. Lawyers say many more provinces may follow suit.

“What it signals for us is a growing awareness that these people in this industry deserve some protections and some minimum standards,” said Paul Edwards, a Winnipeg labour and employment lawyer who is representing workers in a class-action lawsuit against the food delivery company SkipTheDishes.

Last month, workers in that case won an important victory when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear SkipTheDishes’s appeal to stop the lawsuit from proceeding. The lawsuit, which has yet to be certified, claims SkipTheDishes’s workers should be considered employees, which would entitle them to minimum wage and other protections.

Dozens of residents of an upscale southwest Winnipeg neighbourhood are trying to overturn a City of Winnipeg decision to allow a home to be temporarily used for live-in addiction recovery services.

Ninety five separate notices of appeal against the decision have been entered as exhibits for a Sept. 11 hearing, along with an additional 75 letters in support of the appeal (some from the same people who filed notices).

A single letter backing the project, and opposing the appeal, has also been filed.

Despite facing heavy pressure to ramp up military spending, the Department of National Defence (DND) has slow-rolled one of the least complex of its vehicle replacement programs.

The light utility vehicle program has been on the books for several years. Its purpose is to update the military's fleet of two-decade-old Afghan war-era Mercedes G-Wagons and civilian-grade utility vehicles, such as pickups and SUVs.

The light utility vehicle program isn't as high-tech as some other military procurement projects — but it's still a perfect example of how a procurement system petrified of making mistakes can take a very long time to get anything done, said Steve Saideman, a defence expert at Carleton University.

"We'd rather have no corruption and slow purchases rather than [moving] fast and [accepting] more risk of making mistakes," he said.

A corrections officer charged in the 2021 death of an inmate who was shown on video repeating the words "I can't breathe" while officers swarmed and restrained him in a Manitoba jail has been acquitted in the man's death.

Robert Jeffrey Morden pleaded not guilty to criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessaries of life, following a February 2021 altercation that began as a prolonged standoff between inmate William Walter Ahmo and corrections officers in a common room of the Headingley Correctional Centre, west of Winnipeg.

Judge Cellitti said in his decision Ahmo's death "represents a terrible tragedy" that "has no doubt had and will continue to have an immeasurable and lasting impact" on his loved ones, but that the video of Ahmo saying he couldn't breathe does "not tell the whole story."

"In my view, the fact that Mr. Ahmo said that he could not breathe on numerous occasions and that seemingly there was no medical assistance offered to him standing alone is not determinative of this case," Cellitti said.

A 15-year-old Indigenous boy killed by RCMP in Wetaskiwin, Alta., last week handed a machete and a knife over to police and had run into a field before officers opened fire, Alberta's policing watchdog said Thursday.

In a statement, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) provided new details on the final moments leading to the death of Hoss Lightning from Samson Cree Nation.

Lightning died last Friday. According to RCMP, the teen called 911 and told a dispatcher he was being followed by people trying to kill him.