Artikkelit
18.09.2024
Canada is at the forefront of the global AI race
Canada was the first country to launch national AI Strategy in year 2017. Today, Canada has three National AI Institutes — Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montreal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto — which together form a state of the art national ecosystem and act as critical centers in implementing the actions within Canada´s visionary AI strategy. These actions include for instance high federal investments to support new infrastructure, funding for AI research & startups, efforts in the training of workforce and establishing Canadian AI Safety Institute. While Canada has put a lot of efforts into AI on national level, it is also eager to collaborate internationally in the rapidly growing field of AI, and this may also provide great opportunities for international experts.
Visionary work and pioneers in AI research
Canada has contributed a lot worldwide when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and some of the top scientists on the field are also with Canadian background. Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist is one of them, and has also been called the "Godfather of Deep Learning." His research, combining studies on neural networks and machine learning, have greatly contributed to the progress on AI field. Hinton was actually one of the scientists who was awarded Turing Award, “The Nobel Prize of Computing” on 2018. His students have also been successful on the field as one of them, Ilya Sutskever, was the cofounder of Open AI. In addition, Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist is one of the well know pioneers in deep learning and development of AI systems.
History with talented AI researchers and dedication to AI development is shown in the budget of Canadian Government: Since 2016, the federal government has granted over $16 billion to support scientific discovery and to develop Canadian research talent. Additionally, over $2 billion has been invested to promote growth in the AI ecosystem and digital infrastructures across the whole country.
In 2017, Canada established, as a first country in the world, a national AI strategy to be able to maintain its position as a world leader in AI. Since publishing this strategy, the federal research granting agencies have awarded $936.8 million in funding for AI-related research. Additionally, the NRC IRAP, The National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program, has supported AI-related companies with $705.8 million, altogether this has covered funding for 1111 firms and 3837 projects in the AI sector. Investments have also been made in fast-scaling AI-companies and the AI industry in Canada is therefore a key job creator, subsequently impacting economic growth. The number of professionals on this field has increased significantly for the past years and Canada is undoubtedly ranked very highly in respect of its AI-linked research/innovation activities as well as talented work force. Furthermore, Canada has taken responsibility in the ethical adaptation of the AI tools and has suggested several regulations/laws to promote this path in the private sector.
National AI Strategy is led by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, CIFAR
Canada´s National AI Strategy has the vision that by 2030, Canada would have one of the most solid AI ecosystems in the whole world. This ecosystem would be based on scientific expertise, high-level training and availability of talented workforce, strong academic-industry collaborations and high values in ethical development of the field. Together all this would bring positive economical and social development to the country.
Canada´s AI Strategy is led by CIFAR, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. CIFAR is a well-known, global research organization, and was established in 1982. Over the years, CIFAR has grown significantly and is currently really a leading force in the global research community with over 1000 researchers from over 30 countries. CIFAR´s researchers have consistently been honored with some major research awards, including the Nobel Prize, Breakthrough Prize, the Turing Award, the Körber, and the European Science Prize.
In line with the Canadian National AI Strategy, CIFAR's key priorities include developing a robust AI ecosystem in Canada by the year 2030. This objective will be achieved by fostering scientific excellence, with high-quality training, and promoting the cooperation between academia and industry. Developments in the field of AI are expected to positively impact several scientific sectors, including health, environment, robotics, natural language processing and discovery of new materials. Over a hundred researchers/AI chairs are working on these topics at CIFAR and they are based in the three AI Institutes of Canada.
CIFAR has also a Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy that is focused on recruiting top-level AI researchers to Canada. For that, they provide long-term research funding contracts to support cutting-edge research programs and training of the next generation of AI talents. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are also top priorities in advancing Canada's AI ecosystem and CIFAR is dedicated to understand the societal impacts of AI to promote evidence-based policies for Canada.
Additionally, CIFAR is committed to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion at the global level to ensure that AI would benefit all citizens of the world. CIFAR offers free courses that educate AI trainees, and on international level, it also collaborates with various partners to establish “Solution Networks”, teams of experts who design ethical AI solutions to address challenging tasks that can be solved with the help of AI. This may provide some interesting cooperation possibilities for Finns as well.
Sari Tojkander, Councellor for Science and Higher Education, Los Angeles
References:
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2024/04/07/securing-canadas-ai
https://cifar.ca/ai/
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ai-strategy/en
https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/digital-government-innovations/responsible-use-ai.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-pioneers-shaping-future-technology-frank-gzgue
https://www.amii.ca/
https://mila.quebec/en
https://vectorinstitute.ai/
Photo: The University of Toronto is one of the leading universities in Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a strong focus on machine and deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. These technologies are utilized in a wide variety of studies, related to human health, climate, engineering, and economics. Additionally, evaluating the ethical and societal implications of AI is one of the most important focus areas in U of T. Picture: S. T. February 2024.