Ottawa’s largest-ever financial commitment to artificial intelligence includes funds for development — and a promise to improve the lives of younger Canadians

It’s the largest financial commitment the country has ever dedicated to AI, a technology Canada is trying to pioneer, harness and regulate all at the same time.

That’s despite the country possessing the least amount of physical infrastructure — equipment that includes the servers and computers necessary for training and creating AI systems — of its G7 peers.

“It’s kind of like, we have the best oil workers in the world and we’ve got all the natural resources, but we don’t have the pipeline,” a senior government official told the Star on the condition they not be named.

Tuesday’s budget heeded industry calls to rectify that state of affairs by earmarking $2 billion toward shoring up computing capacity for AI development. The money will flow over five years, starting in 2024-25 to launch a short-term funding stream for researchers called the AI Compute Access Fund, along with the Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy, which will ensure infrastructure is owned by and located in Canada to reduce reliance on foreign systems at a time of geopolitical instability.

“Challenges accessing computing power slows down AI research and innovation, and also exposes Canadian firms to a reliance on privately owned computing, outside of Canada,” the document notes.

“This comes with dependencies and security risks.”

Another $200 million will be doled out over the next five years to speed up how quickly AI can be used in sectors like agriculture, clean tech and health care. Toronto Metropolitan University’s policy institute, the Dais, last year found that Canada is falling behind on AI adoption, with only 3.7 per cent of Canadian businesses using the technology in their businesses as of 2021.

Another $100 million has been earmarked over the same time period to help smaller businesses develop “AI solutions” in an attempt to boost Canada’s slumping productivity.

But the government’s belief that AI holds the key to streamlining workforce woes is also twinned to its belief that the technology would ultimately improve the lives of millennials and Gen Z — a base the Liberals sought to woo in this year’s budget.

Government sources told the Star the money isn’t simply signalling that there are lucrative jobs in the industry, but is also aimed at deploying AI in areas frustrating to younger Canadians, like using it to accelerate housing construction or reducing food costs by helping grocery giants cut down on food waste.

Only the smallest slice of the funding is set to go toward the government’s legislative goal of regulating AI. The Liberals’ proposed law, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), outlines the creation of an AI and data commissioner, who would oversee how the legislation is enforced should it pass. This year’s budget pledges just over $5 million in the next fiscal year to set up that office: the first financial commitment to a piece of legislation grappling with safeguarding against the technology’s more dangerous and unethical capabilities without stifling innovation.

Indeed, not all of Ottawa’s money is aimed at promoting the burgeoning technology. A bucket of $50 million has been set aside over five years to launch an AI safety institute, following the United States and United Kingdom in protecting “against the risks of advanced or generative AI systems.”

The scope and structure of the institute is not yet known, but its purpose, a government official said, is to focus on the more “unpredictable” consequences of the technology by ensuring systems are properly tested before they are used.

The final tranche of federal dollars is slated to address another of the top concerns sparked by the rapidly expanding applications of AI: its potential to make many jobs obsolete.

The Liberal government’s primary answer for keeping such a potential crisis at bay is to pump $50 million over four years into Ottawa’s pre-existing Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program to help industries at risk of disruption, which Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has said includes everything from e-commerce to journalism. The money would go toward leveraging the technology in those sectors in the immediate term, while Canada’s legislative efforts would be focused on minimizing the scope of that disruption.

Karim Bardeesy, the executive director at the Dais, said it’s not a red flag that Canada is pushing through large AI investments before a regulatory framework is in place.

“Some of the government’s investments … on the budgeting side are going to take years to roll through,” Bardeesy said.

“Hopefully, they will have the (legislative) regime in place. But I don’t think we have much choice to delay any further on the investments.”