Canada's AI Potential

At the Milken Institute's Global Dialogues Toronto, held alongside Prime Minister Mark
Carney's Canada Investment Summit, three Canadian leaders took up both questions on one
stage. Aidan Gomez co-founded Cohere and was a co-author of the 2017 paper that introduced
the transformer architecture underpinning today's large language models. Dave McKay leads
RBC. Evan Solomon is Canada's first Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital
Innovation. Susan Li of Fox Business Network moderated.

The conversation runs across three arguments. Gomez makes the case that regulation should be
shaped by an independent third party rather than by the largest labs, and warns about
incumbents using rules as a competitive moat. McKay describes a practical sovereignty
problem: the most advanced security tooling is released selectively outside the United
States, which he calls an unfair playing advantage with real cyber risk for institutions
operating elsewhere. Solomon frames the government's position as a build right or build wrong option,
and argues the test is whether society comes along.

Gomez closes on the case for a democratic second rail in AI, with Cohere in Canada and
Mistral in France as the two candidates. It is a compact view of where Canada's AI debate
actually sits.

0:00 Canada's claim on the technology it built
0:16 Two kinds of uncertainty, one week in Toronto
1:11 Who should write the rules for frontier AI
1:46 Uneven access to the most advanced tools
3:38 Canada's position on AI safety
4:47 Development cycles are compressing
6:52 Will AI change more jobs than it creates?
8:41 Build right or build wrong
9:41 How modern AI was invented in Canada
11:58 The case for a democratic second rail
12:39 Final thoughts from the panel
14:42 What's next: geotech

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