Canada is open for AI business – some fear too open

The world's tech powers are sending giant sums of money spinning into Canada, but while many see this as a sign of success, others are worried about researchers and intellectual property being swallowed wholesale. The country is in the midst of an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Huawei and other global heavyweights spending millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars on research hubs in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta. Canadian doors are open – some fear too open. Jim Hinton, an IP lawyer and founder of the Own Innovation consultancy, reckons that more than half of all AI patents in Canada end up being owned by foreign companies. What we need to be doing is getting money out of our ideas ourselves, instead of seeing foreign talent scoop it all up," said Hinton. "Otherwise we'll never have a Canadian champion." The country is home to hundreds of fledgling AI companies, including much-talked-about start-ups like Element AI and Deep Genomics, but they remain relatively small. "They don't have a strong market position yet," Hinton says. Deep learning pioneers such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton (no relation to Jim) have nurtured top-notch talent in AI in Canada for years, back when AI was an emerging field. But despite Canadian inheriting this brilliant AI lead from the country's AI "godfathers", big foreign players have an unassailable advantage over homegrown efforts, Hinton said. "It's not an easy go for the average company to make a business out of AI.