With regulators eyeing the technology and questions swirling about whether its use would amplify biases and discrimination, take people's jobs or even spell the end of humanity, the industry groupwas meant to parse through the worries and find practical ways to move forward with AI.
About seven months later, the organization, led by
The Canadian Press asked members what measures
More risk, more reward
Some of the technology's pioneers, including
But Gupta is worried about the country's ability to turn AI into profits.
"Where we started to lose our edge, unfortunately, is in commercialization," he said.
Some of that stems from Canadian talent seeking higher pay in the
The pattern continues when investors sell part or all of their ownership in a company. Many Canadian founders have opted for an exit that hands their business to a firm outside of
As an example of how AI talent has seeped out of the country, Gupta points to Element AI, a
"It's not great that it didn't continue to remain a Canadian company ... because the big thing we want to see is, of course, a translation of research into commercial success," he said.
To turn things around, he thinks the country has to stop being so conservative and VC firms need to focus less on protecting themselves from losses and more on how to "share in the benefits" of startups.
"You have got to put your chips in the game in order to be able to win the jackpot," he said.
The right guardrails
When the Alliance was founded, countries were already shaping their AI regulations.
He thinks the two policies have "championed the way" for other countries, acting as a benchmark for what AI regulations should look like worldwide.
Any policy the country lands on, Gupta said, should have a "well-defined framework" with a tiered approach to risks.
"The greater the risk of the technology, the higher the grading of the risk and therefore, the greater the regulation and the greater transparency," he said.
The country should also be careful not to stray too far from the global direction regulations are taking on, said
"What it will do if it's done wrong is it will create friction, which makes it harder for Canadian companies to compete with others, so to some extent, the role of
Focus on open-source AI
As gains in AI become more frequent,
Open-source models mean the code underpinning the AI system is freely available for anyone to use, modify and build on, thus expanding access to AI, bolstering development and research and even bringing transparency to the technology.
"That's actually how innovation happens," Chan said of the open-source philosophy.
"We want to make sure that there is space that exists for people to choose to use open models so that we can get faster innovation, so that we can democratize this technology to more people."
Open-source models have their downsides though — people can use them to harm and when vulnerabilities become known, hackers can attack multiple systems at once — but Chan sees the approach as an opportunity.
"Open models are great for countries like
This report by The Canadian Press was first published
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