Google Canada (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has unveiled an ambitious plan to deepen the talent pool for emerging technologies in Canada, investing $13 million in various initiatives.
According to a report, the Canadian arm of the Big Tech company will deploy the funds to support organizations spearheading the upskilling of Canadians. Dubbed the AI Opportunity Fund, Google Canada says it will focus on artificial intelligence (AI) skills acquisition projects nationwide.
While Canadian enterprises are embracing AI integration into their existing processes, the AI talent pool does not match the pace of adoption. Google is turning to mass upskilling with emerging technologies to provide a steady stream of talent and prevent redundancy for the current workforce.
“Canada is uniquely positioned to capture the immense AI opportunity by putting this technology to work,” said Sabrina Geremia, Country Managing Director for Google Canada. “The AI Opportunity Fund will help upskill Canadians nationwide, strengthen our workforce, and prepare Canadians for an AI-powered economy.”
Google’s $13 million fund will support the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII) and will directly impact post-secondary school students with the prerequisite foundational AI skills. Furthermore, a chunk of the fund will be deployed toward training indigenous students via the First Nations Technology Council.
Google Canada will provide AI skills training to individuals from communities with high unemployment rates through an endowment in Skills For Change. The Toronto Public Library will receive funding from Google Canada to democratize access to AI training for residents in the megacity.
Google’s plan is intended to support a raft of initiatives from the Canadian government to ramp up AI adoption. The City of Manitoba has recently invested $2 million to train small and medium-sized businesses on AI adoption to lower barriers to adoption.
Currently, the generative AI is forecast to add $230 billion to the Canadian economy before the end of the decade, saving thousands of man-hours annually.
AI in workplaces threatens job security
Several reports have highlighted the risks of increasing AI adoption in the workplace. As companies leverage emerging technologies to improve productivity and efficiency, entry-level roles are in danger of being replaced by AI.
Furthermore, using AI-based recruiters in the hiring process brings fear of discrimination to job seekers. One study revealed that the training data employed by one AI recruiter failed to cater to a wide demographic, making it unsuitable for global application.
Australian researchers unveil AI capability for understanding human emotions
Meanwhile, researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Western Australia have made significant strides in developing an AI system capable of understanding human emotions.
The researchers have reached a new milestone in developing an advanced AI-based chatbot with heightened emotional awareness. The latest development brings AI one step closer to improving “human-machine interactions” while expanding the potential use cases.
The team achieved the feat by ditching conventional training methods using single facial pictures. ECU researchers trained the AI model on several related facial expressions, providing greater context and allowing the model to judge emotions like humans.
“Just like we don’t judge how someone feels from one glance, our method uses multiple expressions to make more informed predictions,” said lead researcher Sharjeel Tahir.
The lead researcher notes that the new training system pushes the frontier for AI interactions with humans, allowing them to show greater empathy. Furthermore, a wide dataset within the same group is tipped to improve the model’s accuracy from different angles and lighting conditions.
The researchers say the new model can be deployed in diverse industries, including education, customer support, mental health, and AI-based therapy sessions.
For now, the ECU researchers confirm that the next milestone in the research is to achieve artificial empathy. Going forward, the team will explore solutions around supporting AI models to provide empathetic responses to human queries beyond routine machine-generated answers.
However, the team must navigate challenges, including the ambiguity of human facial expressions across individuals and cultures. Furthermore, there is the risk of manipulation from bad actors using emotionally persuasive bots for nefarious reasons.
AI research increasing
AI research is progressing, matching the speed of global adoption and new use cases. One study has highlighted the use case of AI recruiters in hiring, identifying the upsides and the risks of discrimination to job seekers.
Another study is probing the use of AI, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and Big Data in advancing planetary health amid global ecological challenges. Several countries, including the U.K., are investing large sums to support AI research to provide consumer guardrails ahead of mainstream adoption.
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Watch: AI is for ‘augmenting’ not replacing the workforce
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