An application submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in late July outlines the Montreal-based company’s plans to launch a 90-day trial of the service, as first reported by The Globe and Mail. The service would use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to identify suspicious activity and fraudulent callers. (The Logic)

Talking point: The service would be the first of its kind in Canada, and comes as fraudulent calls become more common—at the end of 2018, the RCMP said some 4,000 Canadians had lost a total of more than $15 million as a result of scam callers pretending to be the Canada Revenue Agency. In December 2018, the CRTC ruled that telecoms must apply additional protections that block calls from numbers exceeding 15 digits, or numbers that cannot be return-dialled. Providers were asked to implement those systems by December 19 of this year. A number of academics raised concerns about the ethics of the AI Bell intends to use, however, saying the company did not provide enough information in its proposal. “Machine learning and artificial intelligence raises questions about oversight and accountability that necessitate further public review in keeping with emerging best practices for fairness, accuracy, transparency and ethics,” wrote Fenwick McKelvey, associate professor in information and communication technology policy at Concordia University.