Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Liberal government, in the upcoming budget, is giving a fund of $2.4 billion to build the artificial intelligence capacity of Canada. The announcement was made on Sunday during a pre-budget tour at a Montreal AI firm.
Canada is a leader in the AI sector, and these investments will open multiple opportunities for generations to come. A major part of the $2.4 billion investment will go into building computing capabilities and technical infrastructure. The Canadian government plans to grow the AI sector by consulting with industrial and computing experts.
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What are the measures included in the billion-dollar AI investment?
- Building and providing access to world-class AI computing facilities to researchers, startups, and scaleups.
- With $200 million in support through Canada’s Regional Development Agencies, it plans to Boost AI start-ups to bring new technologies to market and accelerate AI adoption in critical sectors, such as agriculture, clean technology, health care, and manufacturing.
- Help small and medium-sized businesses scale up and increase productivity with a $100 million investment in the NRC IRAP AI Assist Program to build and deploy new AI solutions.
- A $50 million investment for the Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program to Support workers who may be impacted by AI, such as creative industries.
- An investment of $50 million to create a new Canadian AI Safety Institute to further the safe development and deployment of AI.
- An investment of $5.1 million to strengthen enforcement of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.
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What are people saying about the $2.4 billion AI investment?
- Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, – “We want to help companies adopt AI in a way that will have positive impacts for everyone. Let’s stop asking what AI will do to us, and why don’t we start asking what we want AI to do for us?”
- Yoshua Bengio, scientific director of the Mila Quebec AI Institute, – “There are some really important scientific questions that remain open and that we need to figure out how we build future AI systems that may even surpass human intelligence that is also safe, that will not turn against humans?”
- Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Canada is a world leader in AI.
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