It has impressive research bench strength. It has billions of federal dollars for the taking. It’s kind of a nice place to live.
This year’s federal budget included an additional $2.4-billion investment in AI. And the government has boasted that Canada has 10 per cent of “the world’s top-tier AI researchers, the second most in the world.”But Ottawa is “fighting to make sure we keep our skin in the game,” Trudeau told the podcast hosts.
The government’s 2022 strategy update promised that the country’s three AI institutes are “helping to translate research in artificial intelligence into commercial applications and growing the capacity of businesses to adopt these new technologies.” Researchers can work at the AI institutes and foreign tech companies at the same time, Hinton said, charging that this is what allows the tech giants to take advantage.
Strome said it’s long-standing practice in Canadian research “that there are relationships around contract research with industry,” and “a really strong firewall” is in place between IP generated via public funds at the AI institutes and that which is generated through private funds. If academics don’t have an opportunity to work for companies, they’re more likely to leave altogether, Montreal’s Mila said in a statement. It said the three institutes have turned around a “massive brain drain in AI in Canada” that existed prior to 2017.
Nicole Janssen, co-CEO of AI company AltaML, raised the concern that the Canadian government might end up simply throwing money at American firms to move north.