Is this a time for competition or cooperation?
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and AI Minister Evan Solomon hosted their G7 counterparts at the Industry, Digital and Technology Ministers’ Meeting in Montreal, Dec. 8-9. / MEANS & WAYS PHOTO
The G7’s digital and AI ministers met in Montreal this week, with one big question looming: is this a time for competition or cooperation?
The U.S. is clearly pushing competition, with friends and foes, China especially.
Canada, Japan and Western Europe may prefer a bit more cooperation — not just for large language models but for the defence systems that AI is increasingly powering.
I was in Montreal as part of a parallel B7 — or Business-7 — session run by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Here’s some of what was discussed:
1. Overregulation is a risk
Europe is dialling back some of its earlier ambitious regulations, as it watched huge amounts of capital move elsewhere. AI-related investments accounted for something like 40% of U.S. economic growth this year — and doubled Taiwan’s growth rate. “AI is the defining force of our economic competitiveness,” Canada’s AI minister Evan Solomon told the group.
2. Expect more AI partnerships
Canada and Germany will be unveiling more this week on a cooperative approach for AI. Solomon said Canada’s upcoming AI strategy will rest on four pillars — compute, capital, customers and talent — and a lot of that can be built with allies.
3. Talent will be critical
Lots of the AI debate is about compute power and data centres but a greater challenge, ironically, may be people. A global arms race is well underway for AI researchers, and G7 cooperation may help. Think visas, joint research programs and talent exchanges.
4. Make it Q+AI
Quantum is integral to AI, and will be a big focus for Canada next year. Will that be in partnership with the U.S., the world’s quantum leader? Or in competition?
5. Sovereign tech is getting tenser
Lots of different views on what “sovereign” means when it comes to tech. How, for example, do you build and protect borders when they’re invisible? Another way to look at it is to consider “kill switches” — and how one country shuts down another’s critical tech capabilities. Can the G7 set standards that help protect cyber borders?
6. Culture is an emerging wedge
LLMs depend more than we think on cultural nuance, as well as their core human language. Yes, the race for global supremacy — ChatGPT vs. DeepSeek — is all about scale, but there are plenty of local needs and opportunities now emerging. Will the next gen of GPT be a thousand lights rather than one?
7. Trust matters
If this is a race between democratic AI and autocratic AI, which system will better engender trust? No trust, no good AI. The G7 may be critical to developing AI’s principles for trust.
8. Energy matters
One reason the U.S. is winning the AI race, and Europe is falling behind, is energy costs. Expect energy costs across the G7 to be a more important area for collaboration. And as that happens, can energy-rich members like Canada and the U.S. help their allies?
9. Defence matters
G7+ allies are looking to do more in defence cooperation. This goes beyond NATO to include South Korea, Australia and India — and AI will be part of that new front. Today’s most contentious power struggles are in cyberspace, and AI alliances will be more and more important to our defences. AI allyship may even be the basis for a new NATO.
10. Adoption matters
If private and public sector enterprises don’t scale up their adoption of AI, all the big investments will fall short. Adoption is what turns science into substance — and turns substance into products and services that matter to people. That’s tech for good.
