- 6 weeks ago
At the India Today AI Summit 2026, world leaders debated the question shaping the future: is artificial intelligence a game-changer or a global risk? Spanning jobs, data privacy, and geopolitics, The Big AI Shift underscored the urgency for governments to steer AI responsibly.
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00:00There's AI everywhere, but the guest with me here on the panel who's been here, perhaps
00:07amongst the first who arrived well before time, thank you very much for that, Minister,
00:13comes from Ontario, one of the largest provinces in Canada, contributing close to 38% of the
00:20country's GDP, and I don't know how many of you know here, but Ontario is also considered
00:25the birthplace of AI. So, Minister, I just want you to first tell our audience here, why
00:33is it called the birthplace of AI?
00:35Well, thank you very much, Siddharth. First, I want to say thanks to Kali for the invitation
00:40here today and to be able to represent a little slice of Canada. Toronto, Ontario, Canada is
00:49widely considered the birthplace of AI. Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, who won his Nobel Prize just
00:58last year in machine learning, he began working with machine learning and AI decades ago. So
01:09it's basically older news for us. But once we saw the power of it, we began something called
01:19the Vector Institute, which has 800 researchers employed in Toronto. We continue to put out students
01:30every year. We graduate about 1,100 AI masters. This year, we have 1,700 AI masters enrolled. We saw
01:40about 17,000 new AI employees just last year alone. So it's still a field that's growing and growing
01:50greatly in Toronto and throughout Ontario.
01:53Minister, policymakers in India who might hear you here would perhaps want to ask you the question.
02:00Is therefore education the way for a country like India and states within India, which are very large
02:08in population terms and GDP as well, to catch up in the world of AI? Because the age of AI
02:14has
02:15opportunity and challenges. So for India, is educating its undergrads, graduates and masters,
02:23students, students in AI, one of the ways to go about to catch up?
02:28Well, absolutely. In Ontario, we have about 1,600 AI firms all grasping for these graduates. We
02:38put out in Ontario, put it in perspective, just to give an idea of the scale and scope. Ontario is
02:46the
02:46largest province in Canada, but still only has 15 million people. That's your largest province
02:53in Canada. As vast and as wide and as long as it takes to get from end, days to get
02:59from end to end,
03:00it still is only 15 million people. But we graduate 86,000 STEM grads every single year. We just put
03:12750
03:12million dollars in our budget permanently now to graduate a further 20,500 annually. So in a small
03:23country like Canada with 35 or so million people, we in Ontario will be graduating over 110,000 STEM
03:32grads every year. So we have a steady stream of these graduates. So if companies are looking for
03:40them and can't find them in India, you can always find them in Ontario.
03:43Well, you know, Minister, there is one of the senior most policymakers from the state of Telangana who is here
03:48in
03:48the audience and listening to you. And I'm sure that state, which has produced thousands and literally
03:55tens of thousands of STEM graduates over the past decades will perhaps be listening to this advice
04:00very, very closely. And there are a bunch of students here and those who are watching us
04:05currently on all our properties. I want you to now reflect upon
04:10the age of AI from a policymakers perspective, from a minister's perspective.
04:16In terms of the evolution of AI, geopolitics has also crept into it pretty much from
04:22the first day, whether it is supply chains, whether it is the availability of chips and access to the
04:28latest technology. Is there an opportunity for India and Canada to work more closely when it comes to AI?
04:38I think there's an opportunity for India, Canada and all countries to be able to work together.
04:46In Ontario, we've developed several papers over the last few years preparing us to help prepare
04:54our own government on how to use AI, if we should be using AI, when we use AI, why we
05:01use it and then
05:03talk to our public about it. So all of these papers that we've written have come to a conclusion in
05:09final
05:10legislation, government legislation. And it compels us to do a couple of things. One is to talk to our
05:19constituents and describe to them when we're using AI, we want our people to know when, why we're using it
05:28and
05:28how it's helping. So that's a very important pillar of our own AI policy with as a government. The second
05:36part of that pillar is to make sure our public understands, it's a little tough to say, the risks
05:44of AI or some of the things they need to be aware of. We want them to know what these
05:52pitfalls in AI are
05:55and then we want them to know what we're doing about mitigating those, whether it's through our
06:00cyber security programs or just our transparency. So I think those are lessons that can be shared with
06:09any country in the world as we all grapple to come up with policies on the ethical use of AI
06:17from a
06:19government perspective. Minister, what about one of the pitfalls that bothers a lot of people in India,
06:24given our population, the size and aspirations of a growing economy? This is with regard to employment.
06:31India's IT sector is one of the largest employers. It seems to be a bit under the weather when it,
06:37you know,
06:37with the risks of AI, particularly on coding and job growth. Do you kind of share that feeling that one
06:45of the pitfalls
06:46could be on the employment front?
06:49Well, this is a very popular discussion. I think I'm going to answer it in a couple of different ways
06:55if I have a minute to do that.
06:57So first of all, the same way everybody thinks about it, you've got AI replacing the worker. So that's a
07:04common thinking.
07:05We look at it in Ontario as we are now with 450,000 tech workers. We're the second largest tech
07:14cluster in all of North America.
07:18With the 17,000 AI workers we added last year, we have tens of thousands of workers just in AI.
07:26But then look at what we've done with AI. So it is now in virtually every sector. I'm going to
07:34give you two examples.
07:35One that is worrisome and one that is really progressive. So the worrisome one would be our small and medium
07:42enterprises.
07:43What is going to happen? I think about the company. It's a notional company, but I think I know where
07:50they are in Ontario.
07:51And they make those vehicles that scrub the floors and, you know, the person walks along behind it and pushes
07:58it along.
07:59That company would probably have been in business 70, 100 years, making those floor cleaners, thinking this is a lovely
08:06business.
08:07What's AI ever going to do to me? Two kids come out of University of Waterloo.
08:11They have a little autonomous vehicle and they think, hey, it doesn't have to be just a little delivery vehicle.
08:17We could put rotors on the bottom and make a cleaning vehicle.
08:20They're now in 350 Walmarts is this autonomous cleaning vehicle.
08:25And I think that guy is scratching his head who owned the company for 50 years and thinking, wow, you
08:33know, these guys are going to eat my lunch.
08:34And so that's the thing that I think if you're worried about losing jobs to AI, then you better get
08:41with the program.
08:42I think we heard a discussion earlier, lean into it and begin thinking, my company is not oblivious to what
08:49could happen if two kids out of Waterloo can come and make a startup company and make a cleaning machine
08:57that does a better job, autonomous and works all day during around the customers and all night with no customers.
09:06So that's really one side of it.
09:09The other side of it, I have just another moment, in the mining sector, I live in Northern Ontario, we're
09:14surrounded by nickel mines and gold mines and lithium mines, all the things by the way, other than gold, that
09:21you need to make a lithium ion battery.
09:23It's very exciting, but we've now got AI configured drones that after a planned explosion deep inside a mine where
09:36you would need days to literally let the dust settle, send men and women in with hazmat suits, detectors of
09:45all sorts.
09:45Now the blast can occur, a drone can be sent in, AI guided drone on a pre-programmed path, can
09:54go in with a sniffer and detect any issues with thermal vision to see if there's any fissures created and
10:01come back out and give a report a thousand times better and made the mine safer.
10:08And more productive.
10:09And now it's more productive because you're not down for all those days.
10:12So I look at the good side of AI.
10:15So this is a very important point.
10:17One of the objectives of the ongoing main AI summit here is a discussion towards having an AI commons, a
10:26kind of regulatory sort of framework.
10:29I have seen in my reporting career various phases in technology.
10:34Technology comes first, nation states and regulators then say, oh, it perhaps needs to be regulated because there are multiple
10:42concerns.
10:43As a policymaker yourself, do you feel the need to regulate AI in any way or should you just let
10:49innovation and innovators and entrepreneurs keep pushing the envelope?
10:55Well, look, I can think of when I first, I sat in opposition for many years, when we got into
11:01government, I looked at my office and it was surrounded, and this is only 2018, with fax machines and telephones,
11:08desk phones and speaker phones.
11:11We just went in and we just went in and literally cleared everything out and said, we've got to at
11:15least modernize, but it's still amazing.
11:18We're in government, and yet it's very hard to actually regulate these kinds of things.
11:23A doctor's office in Ontario still has a fax machine.
11:27You can't accept something by email.
11:30It must be by fax.
11:31They go through the same digital space to get there.
11:34One is printed in a machine, and one is printed in a different machine.
11:40So it's very hard to comprehend, even as somebody who chairs our cabinet, that we can't get these things done.
11:49So regulation, there are areas of importance.
11:53And I think I've described them earlier, where I think it's important that we tell our people what we're doing,
12:00why we're doing it, and how we're doing it, so that they're in, eyes wide open, and we have a
12:05better sort of a social license to do the things that we're doing.
12:11I think those are more important.
12:13Can I follow up that by asking you about data privacy?
12:16The very nature of the AI world is you suck up vast amounts of data, you train your model, and
12:23that data can come from everywhere.
12:25So the media industry is talking to these engines that you've got to pay us, but those are different debates.
12:31In terms of data privacy and the way LLM can use data, do you think at least that needs some
12:39early action in terms of protecting privacy?
12:43I absolutely do.
12:45I can tell you, I won't use their name or their company name, but we had a very, everybody in
12:51this room would know this person's name and this person's company, came and sat with our office.
12:55In the province of Ontario, think about it, we're a nice little square of data, 16 million people, we have
13:04120 countries of people who are in Ontario.
13:09In Ontario, we are the melting pot of all melting pots, 200 languages spoken in downtown Toronto, just to give
13:16you a flavor of what Ontario is.
13:18They asked, because our health data would be so rich, they asked, can we get our hands on your data?
13:26Well, the answer is no. We don't have a social license, we're not prepared to monetize that, even though it
13:33would be anonymized, we're not ready for that.
13:35Now, I learned something really interesting yesterday, which is why I love coming to conferences such as these, that instead
13:41of name and address and all these things,
13:43they used a retinal scan, and that was the complete ID for the people involved in a clinical trial.
13:51So there's no name, no address, no social insurance number.
13:54We use it at our airports all the time.
13:56Yes, yes.
13:58But I found that to be amazing.
14:00So there's some ways that we may be able to work with this, but there's no social license, I can
14:08say, at least in Ontario, to have your health data shared,
14:12even though the argument would be it's going to save lives.
14:15But we've got companies, Ontario startups like Deep Genomics AI, who now identify drugs in 18 months instead of 6
14:25years using AI.
14:27So there's still work being done, don't get me wrong, but the bigger picture, the bigger debate, I don't think
14:34we're ready for that yet.
14:35Minister, you started by thanking Kali Puri, and she's right here, the vice chairperson of the India Today Group.
14:42She has a question for you.
14:44Be nice, because I thanked you right at the beginning.
14:47I don't know if you were in the room at the beginning.
14:49I'm media.
14:49There's no such thing as nice.
14:52Welcome, Minister.
14:53I wanted to take up on a point that you mentioned earlier about a bunch of startups starting on cleaning
15:00devices,
15:01and that takes away sort of the work that was being done by humans, which is great.
15:07You don't want that kind of monotonous or dangerous or risky work being done by humans,
15:12but what about the fact that some unskilled workers can only do that?
15:16So we have then taken away their jobs, and what do we do with their unemployment?
15:22Do we then provide them basic income, or how do we protect unskilled workers in some of the AI innovation
15:32that's coming in?
15:33I think that's, that is the question that people are asking.
15:36You know, in Ontario, we have tremendous retraining programs.
15:41We've put in things like, to develop skills in Ontario, we have, I think it's getting closer to $3 billion
15:51Canadian into these programs.
15:54So you, for instance, I live in a very small town, especially by India's standards.
15:59I live in an incredibly small town, but we have a college and a university, 7,000 students.
16:06The town is like 50, 55,000 people, but 7,000 students.
16:10We have free education for nursing, for paramedics, people who drive your ambulances and attend to you.
16:22We now have free tuition and books for medical technologists, carpenters, electricians, police officers.
16:36So we're paying, we're paying to upscale a workforce.
16:42You know, I'm going to give a plug for Ontario.
16:44When we got elected, we reduced costs, we reduced taxes.
16:48Today, the cost of our taxes and our cost of doing business is $12 billion lower than the first day
16:55we were in office.
16:56And that business environment has created a million new jobs in Ontario, a million new jobs.
17:04So all of this training, so we have all of this training required for the people that we need to
17:10fill those million jobs that have been created.
17:13Minister, as we close our conversation, I want to go back to that point where you spoke about the kind
17:20of minds that you have, you know, not just gold, but for the AI era.
17:25Do you see any opportunities that exist?
17:27Because in India, one of our concerns is to improve our supply chains with regard to AI.
17:32So at one end, the government's mission is working on acquiring more GPUs, but we need raw materials.
17:37Any possibilities there that exist?
17:40And are you in conversation with the government here in any way?
17:44Yes, yes, and yes.
17:46In Ontario, again, we have mines.
17:48Put the gold mines aside for a second because we're talking to critical minerals now.
17:53Although at gold, at whatever it is, $5,000 an ounce, we have many, I think...
17:58May I interrupt you here?
17:59When it comes to gold, I think that's the most critical mineral that Indians love, but please continue your answer.
18:04I think we have 10 new mines opening in the very near future because of the price of gold.
18:11But the critical minerals, cobalt, nickel, lithium, all of these are in abundance in Ontario.
18:18So, yes, we need capital.
18:21So we're talking to capital markets about investing in our nickel mines.
18:26There's a new one about to start.
18:28It will be arguably the second largest nickel mine.
18:32It's certainly the second largest nickel bed in the world.
18:34So we're looking for capital.
18:36We're talking to companies always all around the world.
18:39But we want to take the minerals out of the ground and process them.
18:45So when Kali talked about the people, think about the thousands, the tens of thousands of people who are actually
18:53needed to process that.
18:57That, we have set up a $500 million critical mineral processing fund.
19:02We may not have all of the expertise in Ontario to process lithium.
19:08We've never done it before.
19:09And it's very complicated.
19:11So we have Mitsubishi from Japan coming over to join at, I think, a 25% take of one of
19:17the lithium companies to help process.
19:19India, companies in India certainly are able to come to Ontario, participate from a capital perspective and from an equity
19:29perspective and from an actual facilitation perspective, an operation perspective in processing of cobalt or processing of lithium.
19:39And then those minerals are for sale.
19:42We want the value added in Ontario and then take them away if you've got things.
19:48One very final question.
19:49You know, there was a bit of issue between India and Canada, more than a bit perhaps, but we seem
19:55to have kind of moved on from there.
19:58What's the future for India-Canada ties?
20:01I know you can't speak on behalf of the federal government, but as a leading policymaker and politician in the
20:07country, what's the future of India-Canada ties looking like to you?
20:10I think it's very strong.
20:11First of all, during any geopolitical challenges that our federal governments may have had in the past, Ontario, my office,
20:20me, we're here every year, a couple of times a year, year after year after year.
20:26And during those challenges, we were asked by the media about that, and we just said, look, our governments, our
20:32federal governments will figure that out.
20:34We're here from the province of Ontario to tell you the business fundamentals have not changed between us, so let's
20:41just take our jackets off, roll our sleeves up, and get to work.
20:44So that's what we were able to do.
20:46I think I would say, flat out, India is a reliable partner to Ontario and to Canada.
20:55Full stop.
20:56Well, it is full stop on the time for this session, but before I let you go, those wonderful shoes
21:02that you are wearing, I mean, AI is never going to come for that, right?
21:06These are made in Canada.
21:09Okay, all right, thank you very much for taking our time and being with us here for this session today.
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