Industry committee  If I could just add quickly to that, one of the things that has come to light recently is that the big tech companies are actually the ones stoking this fear. There's a gentleman by the name of Andrew Ng who has started to ask why. There's a concept of regulatory capture, whereby entrenched businesses want the regulation to favour them.

Industry committee  The first thing I'll say is that I'm not familiar with that, but just based on the description that you've provided, I don't think self-regulation is a viable path to be following on this. There needs to be government regulation. I think in that sense it's good that we are here talking about part 3 of this act.

Industry committee  One of the reasons that I'm suggesting that Canada not be first and not forge ahead is that we need to exist within this world. We're not a leader. We're a leader in research; we're not a leader in adoption. We're a small market. If rules get written elsewhere and they don't apply in Canada, this will be worse than just not getting the Super Bowl commercials.

Industry committee  I believe so, yes. One of the concerns I have right now with the definitions that have been proposed is that some of them are a bit broad and some of them are a bit more focused. For example, there's one that relates to health care, and it basically says “anything in health care”.

Industry committee  From my perspective—again, I'm not a professor or an expert in these things—the role that I see the AI commissioner doing is actually.... AI is not a completely new thing. It affects workers, and we have departments of the government that deal with that. It affects privacy, and we have commissioners who deal with that.

Industry committee  From the perspective of business, there are really two aspects to this regulation I want you to understand, whether it's in the U.S. or the EU or here in Canada. There's the infrastructure piece. We need to put in place an infrastructure with a commissioner and understand who will do what.

Industry committee  Working in Canadian AI as I do, I speak to experts who are assessing these various claims. I think there's a consensus that this sort of world-ending risk is maybe 20 years out, maybe 30 years out, or something like that, and that we have time to regulate these things now. I would say that my focus in the remarks I made is that we have a choice between whether we want foreign companies to be deciding this or we want Canadian companies to be playing along.

Industry committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members, I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak to you this morning. My organization, the Scale AI supercluster, is the only truly national AI organization in Canada. We've supported over a hundred AI industry projects from coast to coast, providing us with unique insights into the business side of Canadian AI.