Deputy mayor warns against accuracy of former mayor’s AI-based website
Kim Smith advises residents to use primary documents from city and established media sources
Kenny Bell, a former Iqaluit mayor, is pictured here addressing the city’s development appeal board to contest a zoning decision in 2024. He recently launched a website that deputy Mayor Kim Smith is critiquing for its reliance on artificial intelligence. (Photo by Daron Letts)
People in Iqaluit should not depend on a new website launched this month by former Iqaluit mayor Kenny Bell because it relies on artificial intelligence, says deputy Mayor Kim Smith.
Smith cautioned against trusting Bell’s City Hall Record website during Tuesday’s council meeting and again in a social media post Wednesday morning.
“Residents should be interested in council’s work, should ask questions, and should expect clear and accountable decision-making,” she wrote in the post, echoing her comments from the night before. “But, we should also be careful about presenting an AI-generated website as an authoritative record.”
When asked for comment after Wednesday’s meeting, Smith told Nunatsiaq News, “AI isn’t the same as legitimate news and sources.”
City Hall Record uses ChatGPT to pull information from public documents on the City of Iqaluit website and from livestream audio of city council and committee meetings.
Bell agrees with Smith that AI is fallible and acknowledges some limitations, like the fact that audio from city meetings doesn’t include interpretation for things said in Inuktitut.
“Sadly I can only review the English audio posted by the city,” he said over text message.
He added that his website has a methodology page which includes a way to send in requests for correction.
“Deputy Mayor Smith is right, AI can make mistakes — so do people,” he said. “What matters is if a claim holds up against the original documents and if errors are corrected.”
Bell was elected to a four-year term as Iqaluit mayor in 2019, but resigned without finishing that term in 2022. He previously served one term as councillor.
Smith addressed one of the investigations featured on Bell’s website, which looks into the water capacity of Lake Geraldine, the city’s reservoir.
“To be clear, water is no longer holding us back from building housing,” Smith said. “With a successful pumping campaign from the Apex River, we have been able to maintain our current reservoir and are sitting right now on 500 days of water for our municipality.”
She also pointed to a $108-million funding announcement from April that is set to bolster Iqaluit’s water and sewage infrastructure.
The city will also soon get a second reservoir, paid for with $214-million in federal funding announced in 2022. The reservoir should be operational by 2031, city officials said earlier this year.
“Our long-term water project is expected to meet the city’s needs for the next 50 years minimum,” she said.
I read the Deputy Mayors social media post with a certain level of chagrin. If we are told not to believe everything we read from AI, we are also told not to believe everything we read on Social Media.
Political shenaniganery aside, her remarks (and this article) would be more persuasive if she actually pointed to any analysis or reporting on the website that is spurious. AI CAN make mistakes – but did it? Point me to where it made an error and I’ll be more willing to take your comments seriously.
Failure to do so is not only a waste of my time, but impacts on credibility.
Ah, one must love the politicians. Don’t believe everything you hear, see or read. Trust US! Get your information from reliable sources. What is a reliable source exactly? The city? The politicians? The same ones that fail time and time again to be transparent. That deflect, mislead, misrepresent? The ones that provide only what they see fit? How many times have Nunavummiut read articles in Nunatsiaq News; where they detail the extent and effort, they had to go through to get access to information and documents from the city because the city would not simply provide them? How many times have other “mainstream” news outlets had to do the same? How many times have citizens been denied clear and concise information or documents?
Therefore, please stop with the don’t trust AI or social media. Most people understand that to form an opinion one needs to take information from multiple sources and then compare it to arrive at a reasonable conclusion. AI is simply one part of that. Like it or not, it now has become an integral part of just about everything we do. Including data and information collection. This comment in not about AI (so I won’t go down that rabbit hole). What it’s about is politicians or anyone in power for that matter trying to pretend like information out there always has to be tainted or untrustworthy if it does not fit a particular narrative or source. Especially if that narrative or source is politically oriented.
Perhaps if politicians who represented Cities, Provinces and Countries were more forthcoming, upfront and transparent about information they share with the people they are supposed to SERVE. Where the information came from, would not be an issue.
PSC