Driving Economic Growth: A Look at Ottawa’s ‘AI for All’ Agenda
Tech giant Google’s chief economist says the federal government is on the right path with its “AI for all” approach as Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon prepares to launch a national AI strategy this week for a country that is lagging peers on adopting the technology.
Dr. Fabien Curto Millet, Google’s San Francisco-based chief economist, said the government’s disclosure to date on its long-awaited AI policy framework shows Mr. Solomon understands AI tools need to be broadly understood and used to realize their full economic benefit.
In the upcoming week, Mr. Solomon is expected to unveil an AI strategy the rookie parliamentarian has said will strike a balance between AI cheerleaders and those who are completely opposed to the technology, in part on fears of lost jobs. He was not immediately available to comment on it. The minister previously promised to announce the policy by the end of last year.
“I like the government’s title of ‘AI for all,’” Dr. Curto Millet said in an interview.
“If you let AI happen on autopilot, you will have big companies adopting quickly, but you will get jaggedness or uneven adoption, on multiple levels,” said Dr. Curto Millet, who was in the country for a conference at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
“The role of government is to be the guiding intelligence that can iron out jaggedness so everyone can benefit from AI,” Dr. Curto Millet said. He said governments need to guard against “gender divides, age divides and sectoral divides.”
To realize the potential of AI across society and business, the federal government will need to ensure non-profits and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), take advantage of it. Dr. Curto Millet said in the past, SMEs and sectors such as health care and education have lagged on adopting new technology.
“We know from the experience with adoption of cloud computing, where small-to-medium-sized businesses were initially left far behind,” he said. “Technology is a great leveller of the playing field, but smaller players with fewer paths to adoption need to have access to the tools that can multiply their capabilities.”
For government, the challenge of AI includes taking advantage of the opportunities that come with tech tools while ensuring benefits are broad based, and there are policies in place to deal with potential job losses and workforce retooling.
Last November, the Toronto-based Vector Institute, a non-profit that focuses on AI research, and Deloitte released a study that showed over the next decade, AI adoption could boost the national economy by about $298-billion, which translated into up to 9 per cent growth in gross domestic product.
“If everyone can benefit from AI, that potential 9-per-cent uplift in GDP can be realized,” Dr. Curto Millet said.
Canada ranks 15th out of 20 industrial peers on AI adoption, according to a 2024 study by the Conference Board of Canada, a non-profit think tank. Dr. Curto Millet diplomatically called the showing “a tad disappointing, given Canada’s pioneering role in AI research.”
Geoffrey Hinton, an emeritus professor at U of T, is considered a trailblazer in the field. And a number of Canadian universities, including U of T and Waterloo, are on the cutting edge of AI research.
However, Canadians are laggards on AI literacy, ranking 44th of 47 countries in a study released last June by KPMG and the University of Melbourne.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL-Q plans to invest approximately US$185-million this year on AI initiatives such as its Gemini service and data centres.
Dr. Curto Millet heads a team of 30 professionals at the San Francisco-based tech giant. The group’s responsibilities include lobbying governments on policies overseeing digital commerce.
Meanwhile, former British prime minister Tony Blair wrote an essay, published on his institute’s website on May 26, on the challenges facing political leaders and criticized the European Union for “addressing the dangers rather than than seizing the opportunities” that come with AI.
“We can’t argue that technological innovation and adoption is the key challenge of modern governance and tie ourselves to a technology environment essentially hostile to it,” Mr. Blair said.
In May, U.S. President Donald Trump scrapped plans to sign an executive order on AI in the face of intense lobbying from tech industry leaders, after his administration failed to reach an agreement on new tech policies.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
