During an evening that featured a Marvel superhero, the Toronto Raptors’ DJ 4Korners, and multiple Blue Jays shoutouts, Elevate Festival’s opening night stayed focused on the human impact of artificial intelligence (AI).
Lisa Zarzeczny, Elevate
“What we choose to build together today will define Canada’s future for decades to come.”
Elevate co-founder and CEO Lisa Zarzeczny noted on stage that this year’s event comes as Canada faces big questions about how to solidify its digital sovereignty, foster domestic entrepreneurship, and navigate the ongoing trade war with the United States.
“There’s a shared understanding that we stand at a critical time and that what we choose to build together today will define Canada’s future for decades to come,” Zarzeczny said.
Almost all speakers touched upon the economic impacts of new companies and products built on the back of AI. Chris Urmson, the Canadian co-founder and CEO behind American autonomous trucking company Aurora, was pressed early on about the potential for AI to drastically replace the work done by humans—something that Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has warned about.
Urmson argued that “the jobs will shift around” rather than being eliminated and that AI will create more jobs than it renders obsolete, but said he expects the nature of many roles to evolve.
Urmson noted that the number of truck drivers needed is far greater than the number of people interested in the work. He also pointed out that the average driver is nearing retirement age. He pointed to a future where, within 25 years, humans no longer drive heavy trucks, a gig so dangerous he likened it to coal mining.
“If you look around any room you’re in, everything in that room at one point moved on a truck. Our whole economy, our whole way of life, is dependent on that,” he said. “[If] we can bring in technology to make it safer, make it more sustainable, and more efficient, it’s an incredible opportunity.”
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Canadian actor Simu Liu, who generated laughs with his tale about being fired from Deloitte after just nine months, also had AI job displacement on his mind. A Dragons’ Den dragon and general partner at Markham Valley Ventures, Liu thinks AI will be “as transformative as the industrial revolution.” But he still noted a personal worry about the potential to be replaced by (or paired with) AI actors.
At other times, the displacement conversation was less theoretical and more tangible. OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane was questioned by TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos on whether tools like ChatGPT are actually democratizing access to information or simply competing with sources like TechCrunch. The conversation followed OpenAI’s recent release of a fast-growing video-generation app called Sora that has surfaced new copyright complaints that add to lawsuits from Canadian publishers like Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, CBC/Radio-Canada, and The Canadian Press already on the company’s plate.
Lehane responded by saying the question is one he worries about every night. “Are we going to truly be able to democratize this? There’s going to be enormous amounts of money generated by this, and are everyday people able to participate if the pie really expanded?”
Perhaps no speaker illustrated the current social dichotomies created by AI better than Justin Scaini, who leads strategy, innovation, and transformation at Kids Help Phone. Scaini unpacked how the tech has become both part of the problem and the solution for Canada’s youth mental health crisis. He painted a picture of how existing chatbots trained to speak with adults can fail to notice cries for help from young folks.
But Scaini also showcased a forthcoming product from Kids Help Phone that blends human connection and AI trained on its own data to help it provide a “new standard of care” that expands its existing capabilities without creating additional harms.
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The need for human connection in tech was reinforced by Accenture Song Global CEO Ndidi Oteh, who cited internal data showing that 70 percent of customers say they make a decision on what products and services they will use based on the customer experience. “So when you think about how you are differentiating yourself … you have to make sure that the AI and the technology that you use is helping you create more human connections, not less,” Oteh said.
In conversation with Oteh, Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst acknowledged that large language model performance is beginning to plateau. While there is still room to improve, especially when it comes to adoption, he noted that their limitations have also become clearer.
“A few years ago, there was this idea that these models will just become gods,” Frosst said. “I think it’s very clear that now they won’t.”
Noting the ongoing “enormous amount of rhetoric” regarding AI, Frosst stressed to entrepreneurs in the room to remember the greater purpose of what they’re building.
“I would encourage you to remember that AI is a tool for the thing you’re trying to build,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is independent of AI.”
BetaKit is an Elevate media partner. All images courtesy Brandon Ferguson Media for Elevate Festival.