Consultation on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Compute (2024)

Consultation on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Compute (1)

Background

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most impactful technologies of our age. Not only does AI hold the potential to realize breakthrough discoveries and innovations, but AI practitioners, and the companies they create, as well as others hiring AI talent promise to spur economic growth. That is why the Government of Canada is investing in Canada's AI ecosystem to drive the responsible development and use of AI across Canada's economy and society.

Canada is renowned for the depth of its AI ecosystem, which includes 1,500 Canadian companies developing AI solutions and 10% of the world's top-tier AI researchers—ranking second globally. However, with the advent of generative AI and large-language models, the demand for compute has increased dramatically. Many advanced nations and private sector actors have been investing actively to scale-up their compute resources to support their researchers, academics, and industries in accessing the compute needed to innovate and compete globally.

Budget 2024 investments to secure Canada's AI advantage

As part of Budget 2024 investments the Government is launching a new Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy and AI Compute Access Fund. This is a $2.0 billion investment, to launch two new initiatives that will provide Canadian researchers and AI companies with the tools needed to be competitive in a rapidly advancing global AI landscape:

a Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy that will guide Canada's efforts to develop AI compute infrastructure over the long term. Investments made under this strategy would be directed at incentivizing and developing compute capacity; and
a new AI Compute Access Fund that will provide direct support to Canadian AI researchers and developers to access the compute they need in the near term.

These initiatives will enable Canada to secure its globally competitive position by ensuring that both our AI industry and researchers have access to affordable and cutting-edge infrastructure.

Key facts and figures

The Government has taken significant steps to support both AI and high-performance computing (HPC) for researchers in Canada. Budget 2018 committed $572.5 million to the Digital Research Infrastructure Strategy to enhance digital research infrastructure, supporting advanced computing data management and high-speed networking for the academic research community.
Budget 2021 committed $40M though the Digital Research Alliance of Canda in collaboration with the three AI institutes - Vector, Mila and Amii - to provide dedicated computing capacity for AI researchers across Canada to support the objectives of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy (PCAIS).
The Global AI market is projected to reach $891 billion by 2028, and could grow to over $1 trillion by 2030. The Canadian AI market is estimated at $6.5 billion in 2023, and is projected to see annual growth of 33.9% from 2023 to 2028, to reach $28.2 billion in 2028.
Canada was the first country to put in place a fully-funded AI strategy –the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy (PCAIS)– in 2017, with three pillars: commercialization, standards and talent and research. The strategy has leveraged an investment of $570 million to build a vibrant national AI ecosystem, established a national program of research chairs to recruit and retain top researchers at Canadian universities, and created three national AI institutes to be global centers of training and research excellence—the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute (Mila) in Montréal, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) in Edmonton, and the Vector Institute in Toronto.
As part of Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, Canada's Global Innovation Clusters (Digital Technology, Protein Industries, Advanced Manufacturing, Scale AI and Oceans) were allocated $125 million to accelerate the commercialization and adoption of made-in-Canada artificial intelligence technologies.
Canada has 10% of the world's top-tier AI researchers, the second most in the world and the number of AI patents filed by Canadian inventors increased by 57% in 2022-23 compared to the previous year – nearly three times the G7 average of just 23% over the same period.
While Canada has been a historic leader in fostering and developing AI talent, a recent report found that Canada's rank on AI infrastructure dropped from 15th to 23rd from 2021 to 2023 out of the 61 countries ranked in the report.
Demand for compute has increased globally. Leading estimates indicate that the Global market spent US$46 billion for high-performance servers and generative AI servers in 2023. This is forecast to grow to US$77.6 billion in 2027, reflecting increasing prices and usage.
Canada’s world-class clean-energy grid and access to renewable energy provides an opportunity to lead in the development of more sustainable computing infrastructure to support AI development.

Consultation purpose

The purpose of this consultation is to help inform the design and implementation of the AI Compute Access Fund and the Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy.

Beginning June 26, 2024, ISED will hold discussions with, and seek input from a wide range of AI stakeholders, our AI ecosystem partners such as CIFAR, Vector, Amii, Mila-Quebec and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, as well as businesses, AI developers, researchers, Indigenous groups and other stakeholders.

How to participate

Submissions for this consultation will be accepted from June 26, 2024 to September 6, 2024. We value your views and would like to hear your comments and suggestions. To participate in the consultation:

Read the consultation document
Fill in the survey (preferred) or alternatively, you can email your comments and feedback at aicompute-calculia@ised-isde.gc.ca.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or require assistance regarding this consultation, please contact us by email at aicompute-calculia@ised-isde.gc.ca.