At Wonder Valley, the giant data centre in northwestern Alberta backed by flamboyant investor Kevin O’Leary, the wonder is behind schedule. Announced as all but a sure thing in December 2024, construction was supposed to begin by 2026 with a first phase operating by 2027.
Microsoft Corp. MSFT-T will spend more than $7.5-billion in Canada over the next two years as part of a data-centre expansion, while vowing to keep data within Canadian borders and resist any orders to discontinue services to government customers that could arise during uncertain geopolitical times. The company’s president and vice-chair Brad Smith is in Ottawa Tuesday to meet with...
Artificial intelligence is likely to take up much of the agenda as industry, digital and technology ministers from the world’s most powerful Western countries meet in Montreal this week. The two-day event is part of a series of ministerial meetings being held as Canada holds the presidency of the G7 group of nations this year. Prime Minister Mark Carney hosted...
The federal government has launched a public registry to keep Canadians in the loop on its growing use of artificial intelligence. The registry lists more than 400 areas where AI is currently being explored, developed, implemented or deployed within the government, including early research projects and tools for operations and service delivery. A Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat news release...
TORONTO -- As parents hunt for gifts that will wow their kids this holiday season, Canadian child development and psychology experts say they should be wary of AI-powered toys because of possible harms, ranging from privacy and security violations to interference with children's creativity and development.
Tool could help spot fraudsters, interference but should be examined critically: expert. Canadian researchers who track online misinformation and foreign interference are welcoming a new feature that reveals the location of an X account but warn that it still has glitches and its results should be taken with a grain of salt.
The Alberta government is about to take the next logical step in artificial intelligence -- using it to draft a proposed law. Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally says the plan is to use AI to develop and introduce the Alberta Whisky Act when the house sits next spring. "AI is a tool that is being leveraged across many sectors in...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Johannesburg for the G20 summit, where South African officials say there will be a joint declaration despite a U.S. boycott. Carney is meeting today with leaders from France, Jamaica, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the European Union and the World Trade Organization. He is also taking part in official meetings with G20 leaders, with a...
WITH MORE THAN 400 EMPLOYEES and valued at $6.8 billion, Cohere is one of Canada’s leading artificial intelligence companies. At first glance, it seems perfectly poised to fulfill the federal government’s goals of keeping up with the global AI race and for achieving tech sovereignty from the United States.
Meeting Canada’s AI moment requires all of us – government, business, academia and entrepreneurs – to bet on Canada. Success demands that businesses embed AI into real operations while policy makers create conditions that reward sovereign innovation. Both matter. Both must move now.
A 30-day sprint cannot deliver sound ideas in the public interest. A proper review needs to recognize the threat of rising U.S. authoritarianism. Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence recently announced a “30-day national sprint” to help the government renew the country’s AI strategy and secure its oversight of ever-expanding digital technologies.
The Context host Annette Goerner sits down with Pierre Petelle, CEO of CropLife Canada to discuss unlocking the economic potential of Canada's food science and agriculture sector.
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says his upcoming privacy bill could include age restrictions for chatbots to protect children. He says he is also considering including in the legislation the right to delete deepfakes. Solomon maintains he hasn't changed his mind about rejecting a wide-ranging regulatory approach to AI. But he says he is open to taking action on specific...
The former Trudeau government’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, part of the larger Bill C-27, died when Parliament was dissolved earlier this year for the April election. It has not been reintroduced, leaving Canada lagging other countries in dealing with important issues of data sovereignty, especially in health care. These issues are critical and urgent. AI tools are already being...
The European Union's democracy commissioner says he won't "lecture" other countries as the EU pushes ahead on regulating tech platforms and artificial intelligence. Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection, is visiting Canada as the Liberal government pursues an AI policy that puts less emphasis on regulation and more on adoption.
Big Tech has been stripping digital content from websites for decades. The Digital Services Tax was finally supposed to make them pay—until Donald Trump killed it. Now tensions are about to get even worse. AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini are turning into digital malls. And we know what happens to the stores on Main Street when everyone shops at...
My first job after finishing university, involved editing videos and developing a database of potential funders for an arts organization. Today much of that work would be automated. In the coming years, there is no doubt that my critical first job once I finished post-secondary will be done almost entirely by artificial intelligence. As young Canadians face the worst job...
Canada risks falling dangerously behind in the global race to harness the productivity-enhancing power of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Despite its world-class universities, highly educated population, and a history of AI research excellence (particularly emanating from the Greater Toronto Area), Canada’s workplace adoption of GenAI is currently less than half that of the United States.
If the new president of Microsoft Canada is concerned that a trade war with the United States will diminish his employer's stature north of the border, he's not showing it. Instead, Matt Milton addresses most questions about the challenges facing his company with Microsoft's resume -- 40 years in Canada and millions in annual investments in the Canadian economy. The...
As the Carney government promotes artificial intelligence as part of its bid to grow the Canadian economy, some inventors who use the technology and experts who study its impacts are calling on Ottawa to add more guardrails — something the federal government is actively examining. “The guardrails we have now are the ones that the big tech companies are self-imposing...
On the latest Forbes list of America’s richest people, Tesla co-founder Elon Musk ranks first, with a net worth of US$428-billion. Second richest is Larry Ellison, co-founder of the software firm Oracle, at US$276-billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is close behind, at US$253-billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, at US$241-billion. What all of these gentlemen have in common...
OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane grew up in Maine, where he recalls there was no shortage of trees. They got chopped into lumber, shipped around the world and then turned into furniture that was often sold back to Mainers for several times more than the trees had cost in the first place. There's a version of that scenario...
The Liberal government has given its new AI "task force" until the end of the month to fast-track changes to the national artificial intelligence strategy -- a plan that critics say leans too much on the perspective of industry and the tech sector. Teresa Scassa, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada research chair in information law...
Ottawa says it wants an AI revolution. But before the robots arrive, there’ll be meetings. Many, many meetings. Mark Carney’s government has declared that artificial intelligence will be the future of the federal public service. A government that’s smarter, faster, and more responsive to Canadians. Imagine services that anticipate your needs instead of losing your forms. It’s the kind of...
Global Affairs Canada says it’s ‘aware of the U.S. operation and is monitoring the situation.’ A high-tech Canadian-made camera system was used as part of controversial U.S. strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats, according to a report by the non-governmental organization Project Ploughshares that was shared exclusively with CBC's visual investigations team.
Canada's traditional telecom companies are jockeying for a piece of the federal government's push for "digital sovereignty" in AI. Among the thousands of business executives and tech specialists attending the All In Conference in Montreal on Tuesday was Mirko Bibic, CEO of Bell Canada. Seated behind a Bell desk bracketed by booths representing tech firms, governments and research institutions, Bibic...
The federal government is putting together a task force to guide its next steps on artificial intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon is promising an update to the government's AI strategy. Solomon told the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal on Wednesday that the "refreshed" strategy will be tabled later this year, "almost two years ahead of schedule."...
When smartphones arrived in the mid-2000s, our gaze suddenly dropped into our hands, as the small screen pulled us inward. Now at bus stops, in waiting rooms, even on busy streets, we stare at our phones. The technology changed us — and it may be about to do so again. This time with a device that is controlled bythe silent...
For the past two decades, Canada has been a polite bystander in the global digital economy. We have allowed foreign technology companies to build empires on our soil, extracting value from our intellectual property and our data, while giving little back beyond sales offices and public relations campaigns. We have signed trade deals that tied our own hands, applauded when...
TikTok's efforts to keep children off the platform and prevent the collection and use of their sensitive personal information were "inadequate," but the company is taking steps to address those concerns, federal and provincial privacy authorities said Tuesday. The federal, Quebec, Alberta and B.C. privacy commissioners released the results of their joint investigation into TikTok, which they launched in 2023...
Following the Liberal Party’s re-election for a fourth term, Prime Minister Mark Carney stated in his mandate letter to his newly appointed cabinet: “Government itself must become much more productive by deploying AI at scale [and] by focusing on results over spending.”
The federal government says it plans to launch a public registry to keep Canadians in the loop on its growing use of artificial intelligence. "We are seeing a lot more activity across departments and agencies," Stephen Burt, the government's chief data officer, told The Canadian Press. The registry will also help the government itself keep track of AI projects that...
Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly from labs and boardrooms into public life. Governments are announcing national strategies, businesses are investing billions, and global leaders are beginning to stake out their visions for how AI should be governed. Yet in Canada, public opinion remains divided, ambivalent, and cautious. This divergence between elite enthusiasm and public uncertainty is shaping what could become...
Wrongful death lawsuits citing the activities of artificial intelligence chatbots are underway in the United States, as reports emerge of mental health issues and delusions induced by AI systems. These incidents are drawing attention to the changing nature of the online threat landscape -- just weeks after the Liberal government said it would review its online harms bill before reintroducing...
When Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft AI, sounds an alarm, people listen. Here is what he warned last week: AI consciousness is set to become “one of the most contested and consequential debates of our generation.” And that, he argued, is dangerous. Here in Canada, where we have one of the developed world’s lowest levels of trust in AI, that...
