Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence

Published on April 10, 2018

Yoshua Bengio / Director - Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms

Cameron Schuler / Executive Director - Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute

Tomi Poutanen / Chief AI Officer - TD Bank

Hassan Murad / Co-Founder & CEO - Intuitive

Artificial intelligence will be hugely disruptive for the Canadian and global economies. And Canada has already proven itself as an international leader in terms of research, talent, disruptive AI startups and eye-catching investments from global tech giants.

This Spotlight will explore how the Canadian AI sector is developing and what its ecosystem of top-notch researchers, talent and companies see for the sector’s future. It will also cover the key issue of policy’s role in shaping the sector and its applications going forward.

Key Takeaways & Calls to Action

Canada needs a Pan-Canadian supercluster solely focused on the development of AI technologies and their application to all sectors of the Canadian economy, not just on one industry at a time.
Academia is attracting and developing the AI talent that industry is looking for. Therefore, partnerships between academia and industry are effectively driving both AI innovation and commercialization.
Many more established Canadian businesses must build their own AI capabilities or partner with Canadian AI companies to stay relevant in Canada’s future economy.
Canada is performing exceptionally in the field of AI research, but it is now time to commercialize some of the technologies developed in our labs. Private and public investors as well as universities should support incubators, which take research to the next level.

Watch and Read the Experts’ Full Interviews:

The Researcher Yoshua Bengio Director - Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms The decisions companies are taking now about how they collect data and what data they collect will have an impact on their AI applications in three, four, five years from now.

The Institute Cameron Schuler Executive Director - Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute AI is not about replacing people, it is about augmenting their abilities to improve their productivity.

The Entrepreneur Tomi Poutanen Chief AI Officer - TD Bank Canada needs local people to fund and start a company, build a talented organization, build intellectual property, and exit to a Canadian enterprise.

The Youth Leader Hassan Murad Co-Founder & CEO - Intuitive Canada now has AI start-ups willing to take risks and also a whole ecosystem of industries willing to support these risk-takers.