How Canada opened the door to modern AI – The Logic

The artificial intelligence boom presents Canada with unique opportunities and risks as we seek to benefit from a technology that could reshape how we live.

In this special series, Canada’s AI Advantage, The Logic examines how Canadian companies, investors, institutions and workers can gain from the country’s early lead in AI, even as Canada’s pioneers in the field become the world’s most powerful voices of caution.

As the last millennium was giving way to this one, Philippe Beaudoin found himself among about a dozen people watching as a man at the front of a room unfurled a vision of a technology’s future. “It was such a beautiful concept,” recalls Beaudoin, whose voice seems designed to express wonder. “More like alchemy than mathematics and science.”