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Further Thoughts on Licensing AI

ByDoug Anderson Economics, Government Policy, Lateral Thinking
Doug Anderson

Aug 15, 2026

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago that licensing AI projects would be far more effective than trying to regulate an industry that even its leading purveyors are unable to manage.

We license all kinds of potential dangers. Not only do you have to be over sixteen to drive but you have to pass a test and carry a piece of paper that says you’ve passed those tests. Older people like me have to pass additional tests in order to keep that license. If you’re caught breaking the rules of the road your license can be taken away.

We license doctors, electricians, gas fitters and just about every other profession where there are potential harms to the public. All of these are regulated by requiring their practitioners to be licensed.

So why would we treat AI any differently?

The principal example in my … More

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Regulating AI may be impossible

ByDoug Anderson Economics, Government Policy, Lateral Thinking, Media, Communications, Paradigm Shift

Government licensing is the better idea

Public opinion is giving AI a pretty rough ride right now due to concerns about water, electricity and runaway machines. All of those concerns are legitimate.

The standard answer to these concerns is “we need to regulate it” but does anybody (excluding the companies that are designing it) know enough about it to figure out what regulating it would actually look like. Probably not! The problem is that it is developing so fast (including autonomously) that today’s regulations will almost certainly fail to control it even months down the road.

There is a better solution – government licensing. We already have a model here in Canada with the CRTC which licenses broadcasting outlets (radio & TV). Licensing was more or less essential there because there was limited bandwidth. However Canada could decide that the need for AI was limited by the “public good”. By … More

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Transparency vs The Long Game

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Government Policy, Lateral Thinking, Personality, Politics

Will the real Mark Carney Please Stand up

In the current age of instant news and social media there is an expectation by the media, and by extension the general public, to know what is happening everywhere in real time. No secrets, no obfuscation, Now.

But in the complexities of the world today and the nuances of daily life, such transparency can be difficult and even misguided.

Circumstances can change on a dime. What would have seemed prudent yesterday may be ill advised today.

The media is quick to point out even minor changes in policy and will dissect them in detail.

To someone who by nature is introverted, the easiest path is to be vague … which is the antithesis of transparency. And instead of having the story about changing priorities that they were trying to uncover, the story changes to secrecy and a lack of transparency.

I’ve written … More

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My $7 Billion Pee & Poop Article

ByDoug Anderson Agriculture, Economics, Health, Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift

Nature’s Nutrient Plan – the Better Way

Doug Anderson

Apr 27, 2026

If you do any gardening … or even have a lawn, chances are you’ve bought more than a few bags of fertilizer in the past. But before there were garden centres, nature had a better way.

Animal (including humans) urine and feces are nature’s fertilizer.

Each person urinates annually about 4 kg of nitrogen, 0.4 kg of phosphorous, and nearly 1 kg of potassium; total excretion [including feces] is 4.5 kg of nitrogen, more than a half kg of phosphorous, and 1.2 kg of potassium. In an urban setting of 10 million people, this equates to 45 million kg of nitrogen, nearly 6 million kg of phosphorous, and more than 12 million kg of potassium.

That’s just the human component. The deer, bears, squirrels, birds, mice, fish, etc. contribute many times more

So for hundreds of thousands of … More

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Our obsession with clean

ByDoug Anderson Evolution, Health, Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift

Why it’s making us less healthy

Doug Anderson

Jan 25, 2026

In the 70s and 80s I was a microbiologist and chief lab technologist in the local hospital

Throughout eons of evolution, from the lowly earthworm to the present, we’ve had a close association with dirt – which is home to millions of bacteria, moulds, etc. (Earthworms are essential for turning that dirt into the soil that sustains the plants which feed us.) Up until a few centuries ago, we didn’t know any of this but those microorganisms were and are essential to our existence. As with all animals cleanliness was not something that concerned us.

We didn’t have soap, we didn’t take showers … and we survived and multiplied.

(Archaeological research indicates that some early soaps appeared about 3,000 years ago but there is little evidence that it was in common use until relatively recently.)

We learned that there … More

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Reforming the Canadian Federation

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift
Francophone and Indigenous Canadians and Cultural Sovereignty

Doug Anderson

Jun 02, 2025

When I wrote my submission to the Spicer Commission on Canada’s Future back in 1991, the main issue at the time was Quebec separatism. Indigenous issues were peaking over the horizon but were still a relatively low priority in spite of the Oka crisis having occurred only a year earlier. Oka was the first time that indigenous rights had become the focus of national attention and was well before the Truth and Reconciliation, Commission in 2008. The more recent tensions between the Wetʼsuwetʼen people in BC and the Coastal Gas Link pipeline shows that we really didn’t learn much from Oka which was over a small parcel of land that a private developer wanted for expansion of a golf course.

In researching this article, I was somewhat surprised to find references to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples … More

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Crime and Punishment

ByDoug Anderson Crime & Punishment, Government Policy, Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift

A Paradigm Shift Approach to Recidivism

Doug Anderson

Apr 26, 2025

Link to same article on Substack

I’m a lateral thinker – an outside the box thinker. The box in this case is conventional or incremental thinking. True lateral thinkers are born that way and are fairly rare, but you can look through history and some stand out – Benjamin Franklin for sure and I would include Winston Churchill as well. The mobilization of a flotilla of small boats to evacuate troops from Dunkirk in the early part of World War II was an act of a lateral thinker while most people were wringing their hands and contemplating surrender.

Conventional thinkers look at the status quo and think about incremental changes whereas a lateral thinker looks at the current situation, looks at where he needs to go and figures out a path to get there. Lateral Thinking is both a … More

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Quora

ByDoug Anderson Health, Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift

As a dentist, what is one thing you think all people should know about dental hygiene that they might not know already?

Profile photo for Doug Anderson

442.6K views, 1,394 upvotes, 21 shares

I’m not a dentist but I am a bacteriologist and the main thing that few medical professionals recognize is that our microbiome (the bacteria in our bodies) evolved right along side with us. Most of our bacteria are either beneficial or innocuous – that includes our oral bacteria. A small number are harmful and these include the Strep mutans which cause cavities. However among the beneficial functions of the good bacteria is that they inhibit the bad. This happens throughout the body – in the gut (well established), on the skin (less understood) and the mouth and nasal cavities (understood by microbiologists but not by the dental profession).

Humans are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution alongside our … More

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Privatization of garbage collection at the householder level as a means of encouraging greater diversion of waste to recycling

ByDoug Anderson Lateral Thinking, Paradigm Shift

by Doug Anderson

published in the February 2001 issue of Municipal World

Over the last ten to fifteen years, we have watched as senior levels of government and regulatory agencies have dismantled the monopolies that used to dominate the phone, gas and electrical power industries, always in the name of less government, greater consumer choice and efficiency.

In roughly the same period, most large municipal governments have bounced back and forth from one garbage crisis to another.
I am surprised that nobody has made the connection that garbage collection could benefit from the same approach. Indeed, providing individual choice and charging accordingly would make the system work much better and achieve much higher diversions from conventional landfill.
Everybody accepts that recycling is the answer to our garbage problems; but diversion rates have been stagnant for several years in the 30 – 50 per cent range depending on how much the … More