Jaxson Khan

Recently contributed my perspective on Canada's AI strategy to this new piece in The Walrus. Lots of insightful commentary in this piece from experts across Canada on many issues, ranging from democratic engagement in AI governance to the tenuous empirical link between AI adoption and productivity gains. "AI is sometimes spoken about with a sense of inevitability, as though it’s a meteor headed for Earth and all we can do is get ready. But there’s nothing inevitable about the moment we’re in. Attard-Frost told me that the tendency to frame AI in this way obscures what we’re really talking about, which is people—in business, in government, in civil society—and the decisions they make. An AI system “didn’t just spontaneously arise,” she said. “It has a whole business case driving it. There are people profiting from it [and] people who are at risk.” Whatever happens next will be the result of a series of decisions made not by machines but by us." https://lnkd.in/gF-4cuSj

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Thrilled to see a panel of women talking about the ins and outs of AI adoption at The Canadian Internet Society's Digital Access Day today at Impact Hub Ottawa. I'm on the "Access, Affordability, & Sovereign Infrastructure" panel this afternoon that asks who really benefits? For National Capital FreeNet, ensuring that everyone in Canada has access to internet and digital tools that they can afford, trust and understand how to use is central to all these issues.

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Last week, alongside BESTWR, the FCI released an updated Vision 1 Million Scorecard. Check out the Scorecard here: https://bestwr.org/ The Scorecard takes a system-level look at the Region of Waterloo’s readiness for long-term population growth across five connected domains: housing, healthcare, transportation, employment and jobs, and placemaking and livability. Over the past six months, we have been busy working with community partners to validate the data and pressure-test the approach. A few things really stood out through that process. Data is a core municipal asset and needs to be planned and managed with the same care as physical infrastructure. None of these domains operate in isolation, each one shapes the others, which makes integration really important. And the real value of the Scorecard is in bringing data together across silos so decisions across sectors and levels of government stay aligned and accountable. A big thank you to Ian McLean and Julie Garner for being such strong partners in this work, and to the Greater KW Chamber of Commerce for hosting last week's conversation. We are also grateful to the many community leaders who shared data and perspective, and to our University of Waterloo co-op student Aster Penney for pulling so much of this together. The Scorecard is scenario-based, not predictive. It asks a conditional question: if Waterloo Region were to experience sustained population growth over the coming decades, how prepared are our systems today? We would love your feedback, so please reach out to us with your ideas as this tool continues to evolve. Visit our website to get in contact: https://lnkd.in/dHgk5CFp

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#Canada must now pivot from a narrow focus on academic excellence and centralised funding to a broad-based strategy that emphasises talent retention, industrial adoption, #AI literacy and especially trust and transparency. Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) #artificialintelligence #aiagents #agenticai #generativeai #aigovernance #aiskills #aitalent #digitaldisruption #digitaltransformation

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Some good news in AI: the government DIGITAL Innovation Cluster, Toronto Metropolitan University's The Dais, and two orgs have launched a program to develop responsible AI use for nonprofits. This is about amplifying the work of nonprofits in a (hopefully) healthy way — doing more without needingly many more resources. It also sounds like this should improve the general tech literacy of nonprofits, where staff are understandably invested more in their causes than in IT. #ai #nonprofit #artificialintelligence https://lnkd.in/eQHJwKpB

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"A modernized Job Bank would allow Canada to better capitalize on digital data about the labour market. Rewriting the functioning of the market is only half the job; the other half is building a credible public alternative that the Canadian people collectively own." Really interesting read about the role of public services in preserving Canada’s digital / data sovereignty.

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What happens when governments rush to replace human oversight with algorithms? In his latest article for The Regulatory Review, Michael Karanicolas of Dalhousie University critiques the Trump Administration’s attempt to rapidly automate public sector functions with AI, calling it a "chainsaw" approach to governance. Karanicolas argues that AI can support, but should not supplant, the nuanced decision-making processes built into democratic institutions. Blindly removing regulatory layers in favor of machine-driven efficiency, he warns, could erode transparency, accountability, and the public’s trust. 🔎 Dive into the risks of automating the administrative state without guardrails: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ejPJih8X

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🔎 Research Spotlight How are minority-led SMEs in Canada adopting generative AI? Digital Policy Hub Fellow Mehrsa Ehsani shows that many businesses are taking a “making do” approach, leading to both gaps in safeguards and opportunities for creative, context-specific innovation. The focus shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all adoption, but on empowering SMEs with the tools, skills, and support to innovate safely and sustainably. 👉 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e9Gyy99N

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Canada's Privacy Commissioner is publishing guidance on predictive AI this year. If you run lead scoring or targeting, that's aimed at you. The OPC's 2026-27 Departmental Plan confirms it: a draft privacy guide on predictive AI is coming for public consultation, alongside a stated enforcement focus on AI and generative AI. Lead scoring, segmentation, churn prediction, send-time optimization. Most B2B teams are already running predictive AI — few have mapped the consent and accountability obligations underneath it. Four things I work through with Canadian marketing teams before that guidance lands: 1) Data in = data obligations. Personal information feeding your model inherits the consent requirements of its original collection. 2) Explainability where it counts. If a contact asks why they were excluded from a campaign, someone in your org should be able to answer. 3) Human review at the decision boundary. The closer AI gets to consequential decisions — trial access, rep routing — the higher the bar. 4) Vendor accountability. Your vendor's data practices are your privacy problem. A DPA is the floor, not the ceiling. Getting ahead of this means the OPC guidance, when it lands, is a confirmation — not a disruption. What’s the weakest point in your predictive AI stack: data lineage, explainability, or vendor contracts? #AIGovernance #MarketingOps #Privacy #B2BMarketing

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My first blogpost for Partnership on AI is out 🚨 ➡️ It lays out two key recommendations for the G7 ahead of the Summit 🌐 🗓️ next week here in Canada 🇨🇦, building on the sustained progress achieved by this group on AI governance so far. Both recommendations seek to keep the momentum going towards developing a robust AI assurance ecosystem 🔎 ☑️ domestically and globally by: 1️⃣ Working to define and harmonize AI assurance tools, as well as to better understand the roles of different actors, particularly through the development of international standards 🌐 📑 ; 2️⃣ Supporting the design and use of AI assurance tools in line with sustainable development needs and goals, especially by partnering with G20 countries to build the necessary digital public infrastructure in the Global South 🖥️ 🌍 Thanks to Stephanie Ifayemi, Thalia R Khan and Aimee Louise Bataclan for their comments and edits. Read the full blog below 👇

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This marks an important milestone for Qatalyst. As we continue to evolve, we need to do more than just help our clients develop plans and strategies - we need to give them the tools they need to implement.

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Reboot Communications Ltd. The Department of Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) has released the results of the consultation it carried out in advance of its development of the latest iteration of its #AI Strategy. The consultation had two components – one was a Task Force on AI – a group of experts tasked with consulting their peers to develop their views. The experts were assigned to specified themes (research and talent; adoption across industry and government; commercialization of AI; scaling our champions and attracting investment; building safe AI systems and public trust in AI, education and skills; infrastructure; and security). The second component was a broad public consultation asking for either answers to an online survey or emailed free-form submissions. This post offers some reflections on the process and its outcomes. Teresa Scassa

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🚀 Exciting update on the GC AI Community of Practice! There are many great AI groups across the Government of Canada, but most are department-specific or focused on a single topic. That’s why we launched an all-of-GC space: a grassroots forum where anyone who works for the federal government of Canada can join, share what they’re building, and learn from each other no matter their department or level of AI maturity. Instead of sharing files, we run Show and Share sessions - think of it as the “show and tell” we all remember from junior school. Teams or Individuals present a project, walk us through the problem they tackled, what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons they learned. It’s a chance to see real tools in action, ask questions, and walk away smarter about how AI is being used across GC. 🎤 Our first speaker will be Remsy from NRCan, who will an example of an AI assistant that allows you to chat with any database. This session is our first on Tuesday September 16th at 11am and you can get the link and register for that and future sessions here: https://lnkd.in/gYg-rdbi 💡 We’re also looking for more presenters from the GC space who are using AI in different ways! If you’re building something with AI be it big or small, we’d love for you to share it with the community. Whether it’s Copilot, chatbots, automation, or something totally different, your work could spark new ideas and connections. 👉To register as a speaker please fill out our registration form: https://lnkd.in/gY62T4TG Come join the session, and let’s learn from each other. This is your chance to see what’s happening across GC and to inspire others with your own work. *Image credit - my AI

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Taylor Owen recently submitted a report to the Minister of AI and Digital Innovation with recommendations on democratic governance and safety in his capacity as a member of Canada's AI Strategy Task Force. He emphasized online platforms' responsibility to inform consumers when using AI to generate material. He further discussed the significant harm that AI chatbots can inflict on young people, including manipulating users and spreading disinformation. His recommendations focused on the need to make AI systems and digital technologies safe for Canadian users and contribute to the health of Canada's democratic society, not against it.  Read the report on The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy and read the article on The Globe and Mail. https://lnkd.in/ecutMhGE

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Canada just opened a national consultation on its next AI strategy, running October 1–31, 2025. I’m sharing a two-part breakdown of my submission and a video series to match. Part 1 covers how Canada can turn clean power and cold climates into sovereign, low-cost compute and real productivity gains for industry, SMEs, and solo builders, with practical steps leaders can act on now. https://lnkd.in/eC6wd_iW Key points from Part 1 of my submission: • Retain a research edge by building provincial edge data centers next to hydro, knitting them into a sovereign fabric, and pricing inference far below U.S. retail so Canadian teams can iterate daily without burning cash. • Compete globally by exporting Canadian-run inference and industrial AI services, not just papers; treat compute like a public utility and NL as a pilot node. • End the campus–company split: embed AI researchers in firms for one to two years with reciprocal lab days; align IP so joint work ships, and default non-strategic components to open source. • Keep research competitive and ethical by pairing cheap, clean compute with strong privacy defaults, Canadian data residency for public workloads, and transparent model evaluations tied to deployment context. • Attract talent on life and mission, not salary: guaranteed low-cost compute, fast family immigration, portable provincial appointments, and the chance to build national-scale systems. • Focus adoption where Canada actually makes things: energy, fisheries, logistics, manufacturing, health systems, and northern services; put near-prem inference plus a visiting “AI resident” into clusters of 10–20 firms. • The main barrier is culture, not tooling: leaders must use AI daily before they mandate it; pair that with twelve-month inference credits and hands-on coaching for SMEs. • Measure what matters: domestic inference consumption per SME, export revenues from Canadian-run compute, time-to-pilot for embedded researcher projects, and cost-per-task declines in government and regulated industries. • Commercialization with sovereignty: stand up national and provincial compute for inference, price it 5–10× cheaper for Canadian companies, and offer Universal Basic Compute credits residents can use or sell. • Fix incentives: shift funding from slow degrees to rolling workplace bootcamps, micro-apprenticeships, and adoption grants; prioritize individuals and tiny teams alongside anchor firms. • Create more industrial champions by placing practitioner mentors in companies for one-hour and one-day interventions that unblock adoption, then scale what works across sector cohorts. • Learn from others without selling the steering wheel: welcome friendly capital while keeping control of critical compute, data residency, and safety standards on Canadian soil.

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💡 What does the future of AI governance in Canada look like? Last week, our Founder, Dr. Wendy Cukier, joined The Canadian Internet Society’s event on AI Infrastructure & Governance Policy, bringing together experts from government, industry and academia to unpack the policies and systems shaping Canada’s #AI landscape. 🎥 Missed it? Catch up on the full conversation now on YouTube ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

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"“We know that regulation doesn’t stifle innovation, especially in this field,” said Jahn, who believes most regulations would apply to tech giants and not fledgling companies. “In fact, we know that regulation — and I mean smart regulation — often propels innovation because what we need, and especially for small and medium sized enterprises, we need clarity.” The potential harm to the environment and human creativity must be factors in sensible regulation.

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Thx Tammy Mackenzie for sharing! I was at the fabulous #Attention: conference in #MTL last week put on by Taylor Owen, Anna Jahn and the The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy team, and very similar themes were coming up. From a truly remarkable cross-section of international and Canadian speakers including Maria Ressa, Frank McCourt and Mark Surman, the 'action plan' for advancing digital / AI sovereignty and human-centric technology was roughly as follows: 1) DEFINE what we mean by digital / AI sovereignty - essentially, the power to decide how digital technologies and data are used and governed in our societies / countries, free from (undue) external influence or control (as, let's face it, we're starting from a deficit here ...) 2) GOVERN our digital space – using laws and regulatory enforcement to protect citizens, consumers and businesses from online harms and anti-competitive behaviours of foreign tech giants (we basically know what we need to do here) 3) BUILD and back alternative tech - in Canada and with values-aligned international allies to gradually enable switching from, and reduced dependence on, foreign tech giants (in AI, publishing, cloud, social media, whatever) 4) GROW coalitions and movements to advance this critical work together! Will be thinking about these as we finish our submission too 😉 🍁

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