Element AI’s Yoshua Bengio and RBC’s Foteini Agrafioti to co-chair government panel on AI

The 15 members include startup CEOs, business executives and researchers. The panel will look at how to grow Canada’s AI sector while ensuring it abides by ethical principles. (The Logic)

Talking point: The ethics of AI are of growing geopolitical importance, which is why Canada has partnered with France and the U.K. to form a research partnership led by CIFAR. The government panel’s role will be more commercial in nature, establishing a working group to commercialize Canadian-owned AI and data analytics. Google has two seats on this panel through Geoffrey Hinton, a vice-president, and Richard Sutton, who works for its sister company DeepMind. Beyond the panel, Element AI remains the federal government’s go-to company on all things artificial intelligence. In October 2018, The Logic reported that the firm had lobbied federal officials 32 times over the preceding six months, more than all other AI companies combined. Element has kept up the pace of its lobbying since then, lobbying 26 times since November 2018.