{"id":903910,"date":"2026-09-21T09:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T09:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/903910\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T09:08:27","slug":"how-leaders-of-canadian-made-ai-are-working-to-dampen-fears-and-maximize-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/903910\/","title":{"rendered":"How leaders of Canadian-made AI are working to dampen fears \u2014 and maximize opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

All In, Canada’s largest AI conference, sparked conversations about concerns around the tech and a safer path forward<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from Be Giant<\/a>, a non-profit, non-partisan media outlet reporting on the people, places, ideas and breakthroughs shaping Canada’s future. Sign up for their weekly newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Canadian AI sovereignty<\/a> depends on both the rapid deployment of infrastructure and on using the country\u2019s leadership in safe AI<\/a> models to allay fears surrounding the technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That was the message from several industry leaders on Wednesday at All In, Canada\u2019s biggest annual AI conference<\/a>. Held in Montreal since 2023 as a way to promote Canadian AI, this year\u2019s edition comes as environmental and existential concerns over the technology have spilled out into the open. On the eve of the conference, vandals defaced the Mila Institute building<\/a>, shattering windows and spraying anti-AI graffiti on the walls of the Montreal AI research centre. Protests continued on Wednesday outside the conference centre.<\/p>\n

As compelling as doomsday narratives may be, they are misplaced \u2013 and actually mask some real threats the technology does present, said Aidan Gomez, co-founder of Toronto-based Cohere, the biggest AI company in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople throw out numbers, like a 10 per cent chance that there’s going to be extinction of our species due to this technology. That’s not a mathematical result, and it’s extremely misleading to the public to throw out these numbers that are just like your gut vibe check on what might be coming,\u201d Gomez said. He said he was \u201cmore focused on the less sci-fi risks,\u201d though the ones he cited were hardly benign: \u201cCyber threats [and] the ability for these models to contribute to the development of bioweapons are real, tangible, measurable things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohere\u2019s merger with Berlin-based Aleph Alpha<\/a>, announced at the conference Wednesday, is part of the company\u2019s strategy to counter these threats. By scaling up with a like-minded (read: safety-focused) company, Cohere is looking to broaden its customer base and otherwise reduce reliance on enterprise AI tech from the U.S. and China \u2013 the two dominant actors in the field, both seen as increasingly unreliable. The merger, which will increase Cohere\u2019s employee headcount to more than 1,000 in Canada and Europe, will create the largest AI company outside of the U.S. and China, said federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon.<\/p>\n

There is a huge market for safe, open and reliable AI models of the sort produced by Cohere and Aleph Alpha, said Karsten Wildberger<\/a>, Germany\u2019s digitization and government modernization minister. Such models would not only help to dampen fears, but open up business opportunities. \u201cI can think of billions of people on this planet who would love to have this version of AI,\u201d Wildberger said.<\/p>\n

Canada is also home to LawZero, a research organization dedicated to producing safe AI. A spinoff of Mila, LawZero is developing Scientist AI, a model built on true and false statements that isn\u2019t geared to maximizing user engagement. As such, it isn\u2019t interested in placating users \u2013 one of the reasons AI models sometimes go rogue \u2013 only in giving real, verifiable information.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal here is for this technology not just to be safe, but to leapfrog the frontier models that are currently being developed in other countries, so that we would get systems that are reasoning coherently and according to our instructions,\u201d said Yoshua Bengio, LawZero\u2019s co-president and scientific director<\/a>. \u201cThat is something that would be extremely valuable to the world, something that would give cards in the deck of middle powers like Canada and Germany, and hopefully many others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building out infrastructure on this side of the border is the other crucial piece of Canadian sovereignty in the AI sphere. Canada\u2019s reputation as a hewer of wood and drawer of water has extended into the AI field, Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said during a panel discussion, in the sense that the country has tended to export resources and talent to the U.S. and abroad, only to buy them back as finished products.<\/p>\n

Bell\u2019s recent announcement of a 1.2-gigawatt Canadian AI infrastructure hub<\/a> in Saskatchewan is an attempt to buck the clich\u00e9. \u201cWhat we’re trying to do here is create a completely sovereign ecosystem, a full stack, so that we can not only create IP here, [but also] process the IP here, develop IP here, and then turn that into commercialized use cases that benefit the ecosystem, the Canadian ecosystem,\u201d Bibic said.<\/p>\n

Canada, the birthplace of AI, has among the lowest rates of AI adoption<\/a> in the world. Yet there are few places better placed to benefit from the deployment and safeguarding of the technology \u2013 as well as the resulting sovereignty this would afford. \u201cWe have the world’s second-largest landmass, a small population, a cold climate, a grid that is majority clean energy, and so we have the opportunity to become the global superpower in computing infrastructure, and that is an incredible resource for the world that Canadians would control,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cThat’s a massive leverage point for us on the world stage, and Canada needs to understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Patriquin is a Montreal-based journalist. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Walrus, Maclean’s and the Globe and Mail, among other publications. He is also a panellist on CBC\u2019s Power & Politics.<\/p>\n

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