‘Godfather of AI’ says Canada must align with medium-sized countries to force U.S. tech companies into regulation tent

When Prime Minister Mark Carney got up on the World Economic Forum stage in Davos, Switzerland, last month, he delivered the speech heard around the world. Emphasizing the importance of middle powers, like Canada, coming together to hold their own against the world’s great powers, Carney (Nepean, Ont.) said if we are not united at the table, we are on the menu. On Feb. 26, Geoffrey Hinton, British-Canadian computer scientist and the ‘Godfather of AI,’ delivered a very similar message about artificial intelligence (AI) to the Senate social affairs, science and technology committee. His stance was clear: Canada does not have the resources to take meaningful steps in AI regulation – at least, not alone. 2024 Nobel Prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Wikimedia Commons Hinton, a 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in physics and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said “we have to accept” that Canada is a medium-sized country, and will not compete with the two major players in the industry (the U.S. and China). Instead, he said, Canada must collaborate with other medium-sized countries, like various European nations and South Korea, in order to protect itself against the dangers of AI. He said one of Canada’s short-term priorities in an AI strategy needs to focus on not allowing tech companies to release chatbots without “very thorough” testing. But that is easier said than done. Big tech companies in the U.S. have “pandered” to President Donald Trump, he said, and lobbied heavily against regulations, arguing they hinder innovation. “That’s a bit like big oil saying, ‘If there’s any regulations on the environment, we won’t be able to get as much oil,’” Hinton said. “That’s true, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have regulations.” If Canada imposes strict regulations on tech companies, while Trump maintains his insistence on keeping AI a regulation-free zone, Hinton said it would put Canada at a competitive disadvantage. But, he continued, that should not deter us from doing it anyway. “If we don’t have regulations,” he said, “AI’s going to do lots of nasty things, like encouraging kids to commit suicide.” There is a way for Canada to navigate this, though, without further dropping down the food chain. It goes back to Carney’s message in Davos — acting together against a hegemon, rather than competing with each other to be the most accommodating. “This is not sovereignty,” Carney said on Jan. 20. “It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.” If Canada can start pocketing medium-sized allies with aligned interests and develop a regulation strategy together, Hinton said they may be able to collectively force the U.S. to establish regulations too, since tech companies will not want to split the market. “In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice,” Carney said. “Compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.” If Canada can manage to take that third path, Hinton has some recommendations for what its regulations should look like. First, he said, companies should be obliged to perform strong tests, reveal what tests they did, and what the results of those tests were. “They should test for everything we know that might go wrong,” he said, adding that it should not be easy for users to circumvent guardrails. He also said one of the most urgent priorities is figuring out how to handle the mass unemployment technology could cause. While there may be predictions floating around about how many jobs AI will replace and when, Hinton said it is not that simple. The technology is evolving far too quickly for anyone to be able to predict what the next 10 years will look like, he added. The one thing he is sure of, is sooner or later, it will happen. “When progress is very rapid like this, particularly if it’s exponential, seeing into the future is like seeing in fog,” Hinton said. “You can see a short distance very clearly, but then the wall comes down and you really know nothing.” Since no one knows the solution to the existential threat AI poses, he said, what Canada needs to do is fund research, and lots of it. That research should investigate as many angles as possible in search of a solution to live alongside something that eventually becomes smarter than us, he added. Hinton said unemployment will disproportionately affect workers in industries like call centres, where they are poorly paid, under-trained, and generally not great at their jobs. He does not expect it to replace healthcare workers, because the industry can absorb as much healthcare as people can provide. Hinton said tech companies have set out to make a large amount of money, and the only way to do that is by replacing jobs. “They haven’t thought through what’s going to happen if you replace a large fraction of workers,” he said. “You’re going to lose your tax base. Hinton argued that Canada needs to change the way companies operate, mandating that the only way they can make a lot of money is by doing things that are good for society, adding companies are only concerned about their bottom lines. “When it’s human rights versus the profits of big companies, we know who wins out,” he said. “If you can make a lot of money by doing things that are bad for people, like Zuckerberg does, that’s crazy,” he added. “You need regulations to prevent that.” If humans cease to have value as labour, they will stop getting taxed, which will affect the government’s revenue. If people cannot get jobs, the only solution Hinton sees is to provide universal basic income. But, if the government is not collecting taxes, where will they find the funds for it? One option, Hinton said, is to tax the AI agents, but he added the tech companies will fight that “tooth and nail.” Another problem that concerns him is people using AI to create “nasty viruses.” While Hinton does not know what to do about it, he said Canada can certainly initiate international collaboration to figure it out. In his speech, Carney said he believes together we can build something “bigger, better, stronger, more just.” “This is the task of the middle powers,” he said, “the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.” Under the threat of AI, Canada has a lot to lose, according to Hinton, so Canada needs that cooperation to keep safety at the forefront. If we do not start now, he added, Canada could soon be too far behind in the fight to prevent AI from taking over. mcollins@thewirereport.ca

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‘Godfather of AI’ says Canada must align with medium-sized countries to force U.S. tech companies into regulation tent

Regulatory | By Maria Collins |February 27, 2026

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By Maria Collins
|February 27, 2026