July 21, 2026 | Nicholas King has co-authored a new BMJ article, "Artificial intelligence as a new commercial determinant of health," led by Itai Bavli (UBC). The paper proposes a new analytical framework to help identify how commercial actors are using AI to shape health behaviours and the flow of health information. The authors argue that AI is making commercial influence more targeted and harder to detect, from personalised chatbots to algorithm-driven social media feeds.

While experts call for stronger oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) technology development, including clearer legal frameworks, the legal system itself is grappling with AI-related challenges. In recent days, Quebec and several other jurisdictions have issued substantial fines to individuals who submitted court documents containing “hallucinations,” the term for false or invented information generated by AI tools. 

A coalition of 40 AI researchers – including signatories from Meta, OpenAI and Montreal-based Mila – has issued a joint position paper warning that as advanced AI systems evolve, we may be losing the ability to understand or monitor how they “think.”

February 12, 2025 | Professor Taylor Owen writes about the "vibe-shift" of AI as he comes back from the Paris AI Action Summit. Owen explains how the governments are pivoting from regulating AI risks to aggressively pursuing foreign direct investment, and Europe faces a new era of AI adoption.

A McGill-led research team has developed the first real-time, on-site technology capable of detecting and deciphering nanoplastics from all other particles in water, a capacity akin to being able to find a needle in a haystack within milliseconds.

Microplastic pieces are between 1 micrometre and 5 millimetres, roughly equivalent to a grain of rice. Nanoplastics are far tinier - a single nanometre is just 0.000001 millimetres. For comparison, a human hair is approximately 80,000–100,000 nanometers wide.

New paper argues that Large Language Models can reveal breakthroughs humans alone cannot

Machine learning tutors affect learners in unforeseen ways, both positive and negative

Virtual reality simulators can help learners improve their technical skills faster and with no risk to patients. In the field of neurosurgery, they allow medical students to practice complex operations before using a scalpel on a real patient. When combined with artificial intelligence, these tutoring systems can offer tailored feedback like a human instructor, identifying areas where the students need to improve and making suggestions on how to achieve expert performance.