Tiny Canada fights to be an AI giant

Strategy will have to focus on a few areas of excellence, experts say

The brains behind Canada’s artificial intelligence strategy held a critical meeting in Montreal this week, an invitation-only affair at the InterContinental Hotel.

The meeting focused on the federally-funded AI strategy being led by the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research (CIFAR) and connected researchers, industry players and government representatives from across the nation. There, CIFAR named its first cohort of 29 AI research chairs. It was a major development in the strategy launched last year to keep Canada in the game as China pursues an aggressive AI plan pitting the Asian superpower against western world leaders.

Canada is small but mighty when it comes to AI, consistently punching above its weight thanks to farsighted investments that began three decades ago.

Elissa Strome is the Pan-Canadian AI strategy director at CIFAR. She doesn’t tire of explaining how Canada managed to forge ahead in AI.

CIFAR was founded in 1982 with a research program called artificial intelligence, robotics and society, Strome says. It led to years of groundbreaking research and, eventually, to a program in 2004 that brought together neuroscientists and computer scientists to compare notes.

The 2004 program examined how human and animal brains learn, and applied those principles to computer learning.

“The idea seemed kooky at the time,” Strome said, “but it turned out to be very successful.”

She points to the AI-based products and services we see today — voice recognition, machine translation, object recognition — which are all are based on deep learning pioneered through the CIFAR program.

“That’s how we helped to establish this really cool field of research. We didn’t know at the time that it would be so successful or so integrated into today ’s technology, but they really pushed the envelope of what was possible,” Strome said.

Canada’s early interest in deep learning allowed universities to attract the best and brightest researchers and students, and build thriving AI ecosystems across the country.

There’s a global race underway to capitalize on artificial intelligence, a cutting-edge industry that’s no longer science fiction. Canada, looking to carve out its place, is up against world economic superpowers. Reporter Emma Graney visited China to explore the country’s growing AI expertise and what Canada needs to do to compete. Her reporting was supported with a fellowship from the Asia Pacific Foundation. This is the final instalment of a threepart series.