Winnipeg’s IT sector pleased with federal AI investment

Glenn Kemp is the managing partner at Clear Concepts, an IT company that not only uses artificial intelligence to provide customer service to their clients but also helps other businesses implement AI.

Kemp welcomes the recent announcement by the federal government that they will be investing over $2 billion in the upcoming budget into the country’s AI sector.

“Businesses have just been hiring people to fill a need, maybe it’s on the production floor, they are not really innovating. The government has looked at this and said for Canada to advance, especially at a global scale, they have to provide some assistance to Canadian businesses to be able to take those risks,” said Kemp.

“This is a great opportunity for Canadian businesses to really leverage the federal funding that is going to be available.”

Among the investments the feds are looking to make in AI: ramping up the country’s technological abilities, providing money for AI start-ups — especially those with a focus in key industries such as agriculture, clean technology, health care — and providing support for workers disrupted by AI.

“What I was most encouraged by was just the emphasis on the need to make significant investments in AI in Canada to ensure that we continue to be a global leader in a number of our core industries like agriculture,” said Jacqueline Keena, managing director at Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative.

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Concerns about AI as more use it

“Don’t be afraid of AI, be afraid of people,” said John Anderson, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Manitoba.

Anderson, who researches AI, says the technology serves an important role in our society, but as its use grows, we also need to be better aware of how it can be used negatively.

“The worst of the bad actors are nation-states, and they are doing that to further their own interests,” said Anderson.

But as we continue to not only rely more on but also invest in AI, a problem that Canada is already facing might just be exacerbated­­­­­: a lack of skilled workers.

“We have a lot of talented students that graduated with high skills in AI,” said Vahab Khoshdel, an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba. “The issue is that, at least for now for Canada, is that usually U.S. companies pay more. Talented students are probably going to find a job in the U.S. Right now, most jobs in AI are remote, so they don’t have that kind of (immigration) condition anymore.”