Evidence of meeting #29 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Richmond East—Steveston, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Cukier, you talked about having the talent and human capital. If you look at budget 2025, it announced $1.7 billion to recruit top international researchers. What are your thoughts on whether this could assist in strengthening recruitment and retention in the AI space? How do federal investments in research infrastructure and talent contribute to the commercialization of the industry and the success of it?
Professor, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Ted Rogers School of Management, and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, As an Individual
When we think about talent, think about a pyramid. The bottom is AI literacy for all. The top is the deep AI skills to build the tools. The middle, though, is much bigger than the top, and a lot of other things are required.
The strategy to attract and retain the best and brightest from around the world is a very good one, particularly as we're seeing barriers to international scholars, for example, who want to work in the United States. That's a huge opportunity for Canada to scoop up talent. I think that's very important.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Richmond East—Steveston, BC
You said something there that we heard from other witnesses. There's already an AI of things. You talked about small and medium-sized businesses, agriculture and health care—things that we can probably target quickly. That's the bigger picture, maybe, that I went to first. Maybe the smaller picture is something we can focus on.
Professor, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Ted Rogers School of Management, and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, As an Individual
I want to say “and”. It's about attracting the best and brightest from around the world, like our Nobel Prize winner and Dr. Bengio, who spoke earlier, who are both immigrants to Canada. That strategy works. However—the “and”—we also need a strategy that really focuses on the tools and the talent to create AI adoption. That's a different population and a different skill set, and it's not all science and technology.
My view is that, yes, we need international scholarship, but if you're looking at AI adoption, it's a different set of skills. We have not paid enough attention to developing those skills and providing that support.
Think about our student workplace placement program, the co-op programs and the support for student internships. We're sitting on a potential gold mine of mobilizing young people to get into SMEs. The kinds of skills needed to help an SME become more productive are not those of someone with a Ph.D. in computer science. We need a more comprehensive national skills strategy when it comes to AI.
Does that answer the question?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you very much, Mr. Bains.
I'm going to take the final two minutes and use my prerogative as chair to ask a quick question.
Professor Craig, this question is for you.
I come from the world of education. I had the chance to spend some time with a couple of high school classes in my riding a few weeks ago, and I told them that at the industry committee we were delving into the future of industry as the disruption of AI hits us. What I hadn't considered, but what a lot of these young 16- and 17-year-olds brought up with me, was how this related to things they were designing: visual designs and artistic designs of a variety of different kinds. They're creating them with or without the assistance of AI, but AI is taking what they've created, and they're very concerned about how to preserve their rights, their intellectual property.
Can you just speak directly to young people—I can assure you they're not watching, but I'll bring the clip to them—and tell them what they should be thinking about and what you want us to be thinking about in regard to how we can be protective of intellectual property as this technology develops? I ask because creativity is such an important source of not only inspiration but also monetization in this day and age for young people.
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
I have a couple of high-schoolers myself, and I can assure you they're not watching.
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
The changing shape of creativity in this AI era is a fascinating thing for us to consider, especially watching the way that high-schoolers and others interact with the technology and the way it influences their learning and creativity in positive and, of course, negative ways, which are of concern to someone working in the education sector.
We do see, in some sense, a democratization of the capacity to create. The things that high-schoolers can create with the help of some of these AI tools for their images, PowerPoint slides and study notes are truly impressive developments.
At the same time, as you suggest, there are concerns about what this is going to mean for the future of learning and education. Also, what does it mean for the future of creativity? If everybody can create an output that looks like it was made by a leading graphic designer but was in fact created by my 15-year-old, what does that mean for the future of graphic design? These are very real questions we have to confront.
I want to again caution on the relevance of copyright and intellectual property to those questions. I have suggested that we should restrain the expansion of copyright law such that it doesn't protect the outputs that are generated by these machines. I think that's the best way to make sure that the copyright system encourages human authorship and human creativity rather than just incentivizing the mass creation of a glut of AI-generated outputs. The copyright system should remain focused on encouraging and incentivizing humans to create using human skill and judgment and intellectual capacity.
As for how to protect that once it is created, I take you to be saying that it's going to get sucked back into the system and become the training data that others use. I don't think our focus should be on the inputs to these systems. I think when artistic works, outputs or creations are used to train an AI system, that's part of the black box of how these algorithms work.
Our focus should be on protecting human authors against the substitutes in the market, the outputs of AI that might be substantially similar to those works and might compete with them and undercut the market. That's where copyright law should continue to work, as it has always worked. If the outputs are infringing, then the outputs will continue to be infringing, but limiting the capacity of AI to be trained on art, music and literature would be a serious obstacle to its development—and it kind of misses the point.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you very much. It's certainly a fascinating realm.
Thanks, everybody. That was a great discussion today. I think we're learning a lot and positioning ourselves well to provide some feedback to the government moving forward.
Colleagues, I have one quick thing, which is the budget. This is standard operating procedure. In the budget for the meeting, there was a line item in which we underestimated how many meetings there would be. We were basing it on six, but we'll end up having eight, so we need approval for a $381 increase to the costs associated with those two additional meetings.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
I'll take that as unanimous consent, something AI could not do.
Thank you very much, everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
The meeting is adjourned.