Today at the KPMG AI Made Real Summit in Vancouver, Ajay Agrawal—founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and bestselling co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence—delivered a keynote that contrasted optimism with a sobering reality: Canada’s early leadership in artificial intelligence is not a guarantee of future success.
“Just because we were there at the very beginning doesn’t mean that we have a right to lead,” said Agrawal, referencing Canada’s foundational role in AI through pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton. His message was clear: other nations are investing at far greater scale and speed.
While Canada recently announced a $2 billion AI fund, Agrawal pointed out that the smaller nations like UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing $100 billion into the same opportunity. The U.S., meanwhile, is seeing a surge of private and public capital flowing into AI infrastructure—from nuclear power deals to billion-dollar data centre buildouts.
Agrawal introduced a critical lens from economics, describing AI as a dramatic reduction in the cost of prediction. Like electricity in the industrial era, AI enables entirely new systems of value creation—but only if organizations rethink their workflows, not just bolt on new tools.
“The machines can do all the stuff that was grunt work,” he explained. “What’s left is your human experience.”
Drawing from his book Power and Prediction, Agrawal described the current moment as the “between times”: a phase where we’ve seen the power of AI but haven’t yet re-engineered our organizations to harness it.
He warned against complacency, likening Canada’s attitude to a country resting on its Nobel laureates while the rest of the world races ahead. Countries like the UAE have AI ministers and ten-figure budgets. Canada has legacy pride.
Agrawal illustrated how AI’s true value lies in full system redesigns, much like the shift from multi-story steam-powered factories to single-story electrified ones. “You don’t get to the light bulb by improving the candle,” he said, echoing KPMG’s Marc Low.
He also addressed the misconception that AI is primarily a threat to jobs. On the contrary, Agrawal argued that re-engineering the economy will require massive human effort, especially in roles involving judgment—a capability AI still lacks.
“Prediction is cheap,” he said. “Judgment is not.”
The keynote ended with a call to action for Canadian leaders. As organizations around the world shift from experimentation to implementation, Canada must move beyond its historic contributions and start leading with scale, strategy, and urgency.
“We are shifting from a low-fidelity prediction world to a high-fidelity one. And that changes everything.”
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