Last fall, we undertook the most ambitious project in our history: a newsroom-wide effort to give readers an understanding what is uniquely Canadian about this moment in artificial intelligence. The resulting 13-part series examined Canada’s first-mover advantage in AI, from academic research in Montreal to life sciences breakthroughs in Vancouver to innovation and defence policy in Ottawa. 

Our reporters also looked at the wider ethical issues around AI—which have seized the global imagination in large part because of the advocacy of Canadian computer scientists—and the geopolitics of the technology. They attended a major AI safety summit in the U.K. and reported on heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

This groundbreaking collection of original work from The Logic’s newsroom was published as a book this week by upstart Canadian publisher Sutherland House as part of its innovative Sutherland Quarterly series of essays on current affairs. Superintelligence: Is Canada Ready for AI? is now available to purchase directly from the Sutherland House website and wherever books are sold. We couldn’t be prouder to have worked with Sutherland House publisher Ken Whyte—the founding editor of National Post and longtime editor of Maclean’s—to bring our work to the page.

The irony of a proudly digital news company releasing an analogue edition is not lost on me. My office at The Boston Globe was directly above the presses—I could feel the vibrations through the floor as they churned out the newspaper every night—and I readily admit to being a romantic about the power of the printed word. A recent study showed my nostalgia isn’t poorly placed. A student who spends 10 hours reading books on paper comprehends them six to eight times better than if they read them on a digital device, the research found.

But my romanticism about print isn’t necessarily helpful. We all know about the disruption of the newspaper industry: news consumption, and the revenues associated with it, migrated to digital, making the cost structure of printing and distributing print newspapers untenable.

Many of us at The Logic have lived this upheaval firsthand, and we lament the loss of the jobs being cut in the industry on what seems like a weekly basis. But if you interrogate each individual news organization’s balance sheet, almost all the losses can be attributed to shareholder expectations, cost structures, valuations or debt obligations that aren’t in line with the revenues currently achievable in the digital age. Journalism can still be a good business.

It is easy to buy into the narrative that journalism is dying. I know it is especially hard for media workers who’ve lost jobs—some more than once—or who feel their employment is ever more precarious, and I don’t mean this as a criticism of any of them. But there is a danger that this narrative will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all the public ever hears from us as an industry is a lament for how things used to be, and how impossible the business has become, our defeatism risks alienating the readers, viewers and listeners we work to serve. 

Since I launched The Logic in 2018, I’ve found it interesting to compare this industry to the tech industry we cover. Though the global tech sector laid off roughly a quarter million workers last year, tech companies continue to innovate and launch new products, and vehemently reject any suggestion that their days are numbered. 

News organizations need to regain some of that same confidence and swagger. Despite all that’s been lost, there are more people consuming journalism today than at any other point in history, and despite persistent efforts to erode the media’s credibility, we are still here. In times of crisis, citizens still turn to news sources they trust to get the information they need. We are an essential service—and this is why I remain optimistic about the future of journalism and the future of the journalism business. 

I learned a long time ago that technological disruption can wreck entire business models, but that over time, these same forces can create efficiencies that let new entrants reach new audiences. The cycle continues. Rinse, repeat. This is a moment where the old models have been decimated and the new models are still emerging. That can be scary. But it is just a moment, and if we make room for innovation, together we can build something new.

This is the belief that has fuelled The Logic for the nearly six years of its existence. It is the premise of the Sutherland Quarterly series, with its innovative subscription business model. And it is in many ways the theme of the reporting on AI collected in Superintelligence. 

I hope you’ll buy a copy of our first book, and that you’ll continue to read The Logic. We’re excited for you to see what we have in store for you in 2024.