NEW YORK — Canadian corporate leaders say governments must match efforts to regulate artificial intelligence with a concerted push to get other businesses using the technology. Here’s what you need to know:

The backdrop: Canada will host the G7 in 2025. Last year the group proposed voluntary guardrails for companies developing the technology. 

In New York this week, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce convened executives from major Canadian companies, startups, and universities, as well as U.S. tech firms, to discuss developments in global AI policy and what they might push Ottawa to add to its G7 agenda.

The asks: Business leaders say Ottawa should focus on measures designed to increase AI use. While the technology promises to boost productivity, adoption in Canada remains low, noted Catherine Fortin LeFaivre, the chamber’s vice-president of strategic policy and global partnerships. “We see this as relatively low-hanging fruit.”

Fortin LeFaivre cited a suggestion from another attendee that governments use airports as a testing ground for the technology, allowing travellers to see how it could speed up their trips.   

Gabriel Batstone, CEO of Ottawa-based software firm Contextere, called for programs to educate firms on the potential applications of AI. The 12-person startup sells a chatbot that blue-collar workers can use to answer technical questions about tasks like repairing aircraft or maintaining heating units. “Anything government can do to help [companies] understand both the pros and cons of [AI] is good,” Batstone said. 

Canadians remain more skeptical of AI than people in other countries. Policies to ensure AI is used ethically can “make people comfortable and trust in these kinds of technologies without being so heavy-handed as to quash innovation,” said former federal justice minister David Lametti. Other speakers at the chamber event included Tom Clark, Canada’s New York consul general, as well as executives from Amazon, Microsoft and the White House. 

The balancing act: AI luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio continue to express concerns about the safety of the most powerful AI systems, and push policymakers for rules to curb their development. At the All In conference in Montreal last week, Bengio accused “tech lobbies” of “rejecting any kind of governance intervention.” 

Executives and speakers on the chamber’s New York mission insisted businesses are not trying to avoid new rules altogether, but rather ensure they can make use of AI productively. “No one is saying there shouldn’t be regulation,” said Fortine LeFaivre, noting businesses “need guardrails to know how [to] operate.” Still, the chamber and several of the firms represented have called for substantial changes to the Liberal government’s Bill C-27, which contains its proposed AI law.

AI regulation should address concerns about bias, privacy and security, said Kevin Allison, president of Minerva Technology Policy Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm. But it should also leave enough room for companies to “roll this stuff out in a responsible way, to experiment with it and to figure out how it’s actually going to work.”

Back home: The House of Commons industry committee is still reviewing Bill C-27 but its progress has been slow. Parliament is unlikely to pass the law in the limited time before next year’s scheduled federal election, said Lametti, now at law firm Fasken. 

Canada should use the lack of a domestic rulebook to its advantage at next year’s G7 meetings, he said. Ottawa could broker a compromise between different approaches to AI regulation—the EU has adopted an economy-wide AI law, while the U.S., U.K. and Japan focus on regulating specific sectors. “We can play the room a bit, in a positive way.”