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AI, Eh? – Unpacking Canada’s $2.4 Billion Bet

How much is your country investing in artificial intelligence?

Up here in Canada, our Liberal government, under current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has made a bold move to attempt at securing the nation’s standing as a frontrunner in the AI race with a $2.4 billion investment package.
This commitment, announced at Scale AI‘s offices in my hometown of Montreal, aims to secure high-quality jobs for future generations.

The money is one thing, but getting that kind of compute is another thing.

Central to this initiative is the government’s plan to inject $2 billion into significantly enhancing the computing capabilities accessible to Canada’s AI researchers, startups, and scaleups.
The AI Compute Access Fund and the development of a Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy signal a long-term commitment to growing AI infrastructure, ensuring that Canadian-owned and located AI resources flourish.
Getting the chips, computers and processing power will be no easy task.
Anyone else remember how countries threw money at Covid vaccine producers?
This feels more like that… only exponentially bigger.

Let’s say Canada can circle that square…

Beyond computing power, an additional $405 million is earmarked for a variety of projects aimed at nurturing AI startups, driving AI adoption across critical sectors, and laying the groundwork for a safer AI future.
This includes funding to bring new AI technologies to market, boost AI integration within small and medium-sized businesses, and establish a Canadian AI Safety Institute to navigate the ethical challenges posed by advanced AI systems.

And this is where the real work comes in.

How do we ensure that we can get the best talent to stay here or move here?
How do we ensure that this money doesn’t help these startups to grow and simply be acquired by one of the Big Tech players?
How do we ensure that this money doesn’t give the Big Tech companies much more money and power?
How do ensure that these well-funded initiatives can now get access to enough data to create meaningful and valuable Large Language Models?

With Budget 2024 on the horizon (which means this funding could be more of a election promise than a deliverable), the Canadian AI community eagerly awaits further details on the implementation of these ambitious measures.

Is it possible to both fund new AI initiatives and keep them locked within a geographic border?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM. Listen in right here.

Mitch Joel · AI, Eh? – Unpacking Canada’s $2.4 Billion AI Bet

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.