Navid Imenpour | Contributor
Featured image: The government and private sector join forces once again. | Courtesy of Alex Knight
Vector Institute, Canada’s newly established artificial intelligence (AI) research and development facility, has received a total of $180 million in funding from the private sector, as well as the provincial and federal governments.
Vector launched less than a year ago in March with praise from notable figures, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Kathleen Wynne, making it clear that Canada sees AI as the future of technology and is trying to establish itself as a global player in the industry. Vector is a major part of the technological hotbed Silicon Valley North, and has been attracting talent from across the country.
“AI is essentially a field of statistics and computer science,” says Andrea Arbuthnot, a spokesperson from Vector.
Arbuthnot says applications for AI are far and wide, including speech recognition, translation, and advertising.
“At the Vector Institute, our focus is on machine learning and deep learning,” Arbuthnot continues. “It kind of learns the way a human does.” She adds that this can be useful in the health field “by identifying patterns.”
In addition to funding, the Ontario government plans to increase the number of post-secondary students graduating from the STEM disciplines by 25 per cent over the next five years.
This will see the current number of graduates in the field rise from 40,000 to 50,000, making Ontario the top producer of post-secondary STEM graduates per capita in North America. Robert Haché, the vice president of Research & Innovation at York, has recognized the importance of this technology, and has called for a formal strategy on AI that is “built from the ground up.”
While the governments’ investment and focus on AI is creating jobs and attracting talent from all across the country, there are concerns about the negative impact such technology will have on employment, such as automated machines replacing human labourers, where higher minimum wages and neoliberal policies that grant companies increased freedom from government regulations are of primary concern.
Sofia Sousa-Dias, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science, provides a counterpoint to these concerns, stating: “Technologies such as AI, 3D printing, and advanced robotics can potentially impact certain job classifications. These technologies could create new jobs in Ontario that do not exist today, and reallocate the labour force towards a more creative and interactive capacity.”
Another debated topic surrounding AI is the plethora of moral issues that are raised with the development and implementation of such technologies, most so in areas such as privacy rights.
According to Professor Michael Jenkin of the Lassonde School of Engineering, not many people are well-versed with the legalistic structures related to privacy rights. People rarely think about the terms of service they agree to, especially when it come to signing up for free services.
Jenkin gives the example of large social media organizations that can sell bulk information datamined from people. While the average user may not think that the info he or she shares online matters, he adds it can be used to build large-scale descriptions of them from their online presence; that it is the reality of this technology.
While AI is becoming increasingly relevant in a rapidly evolving technological climate, and offers a seemingly unlimited scope of applications and benefits for the economy, a heightened awareness of the effects this technology could have on consumer rights would be prudent.
