Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst says that most of the worldâs experience of technology is defined by Silicon Valley and the United Statesâand that âisnât great.âÂ
AI is “super useful” but is not “a god inside a computer.â
Nick Frosst, Cohere
âWeâre all pretty aware that that isnât great, that the vision of life, that the view of the way the world should be coming out of Silicon Valley is not really the one that a lot of the world wants,â Frosst said on Thursday at the Vector Instituteâs annual AI research conference in Toronto at The Carlu. âItâs not the one that Canada wants.â
Frosst hopes to play a role in changing the global view in part by building up Canadaâs AI ecosystem with Toronto-based Cohere, the countryâs horse in the global large language model (LLM) race.
Some industry leaders have argued that the Government of Canadaâs next AI strategy should pick domestic winners; the feds have already broadcast their intention to make Cohere into âa Canadian champion.â At a media dinner BetaKit attended earlier this month, Frosst called the designation âenormously motivating.â
âIn the rarefied air of foundation model companies, [as] the only one in Canada, we take it enormously seriously, and are aware of how much work there is to do,â Frosst added.
Unlike some of its big-name competitors, Cohere has bet on specialized deployment of smaller, custom large language models for businesses rather than chasing larger, âdo-everythingâ frontier models. Itâs an approach Frosst claimed has served Cohere well to date.
Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez recently signalled that the scaling company could go public âsoon,â a goal US rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic are also working towards. The AI firm, which in August was valued at $7 billion USD (approximately $9.3 billion CAD at the time), reportedly soared past its sales target recently after hitting $240 million USD in annual recurring revenue.
At the media dinner, Frosst wouldnât say when Cohere might actually make the leap, but argued the firmâs focus on efficiency would make it a suitable candidate for public markets.
As to what Cohere is focusing on in the meantime, Frosst made clear that the company is not chasing artificial general intelligence (AGI) or a âdigital godâ that could take over the world. On stage at the Vector Institute conference on Thursday, Frosst polled attendees on how many believe that LLMs pose an existential threat to humanity, and only a few scattered hands went up.
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Frosst argued that there would have been many more if it were 2023, and expressed his belief that LLMs will not destroy humanity or eliminate all jobs, a perspective that differs from some of his peers, including his mentor Geoffrey Hinton.
âWe have to acknowledge this is a technology [that] is super useful [and] going to fundamentally change the way computers work [and] the way the economy works,â Frosst said. âBut it is not the AI of [science fiction] ⊠Itâs not a god inside a computer.â
Cohere’s chief AI officer, Joelle Pineau, told media she finds the firmâs focus on delivering return on investment (ROI) rather than AGI ârefreshingly pragmatic.â Frosst said customer ROI has always been a focus for Cohere, and claimed the companyâs internal numbers are âcloser to the inverseâ of that much-discussed MIT study, which found 95 percent of corporate generative AI pilots fail.
When Frosst isnât building LLMs or talking about his work at conferences, he spends his spare time on stage as lead singer of Toronto indie rock band Good Kid, which is dropping its debut album in April and going on tour in 2026. Despite Cohereâs rising profile, Frosst told media that on the street he gets recognized more often for being in Good Kid.
While Frosst said it would be a bit âtoo Michael Scottâ for his taste to add Good Kid to Cohere event playlists, Pineau did say the music at Cohere functions is much better than at her last employer, Meta.
Feature image courtesy the Vector Institute. Photo by Evelyn Bray Photography.