Gen AI is a generational opportunity to boost Canadian productivity at a time when our performance is steadily headed in the wrong direction, the Chamber believes. PHOTO by Pexels.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business Data Lab (BDL) recently released a report detailing the sluggish adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) among Canadian businesses, and how a multitude of barriers, along with a lack of trust in the new technology, could impede the adoption levels needed to improve Canada’s economic growth.
The report, Prompting Productivity: Generative AI Adoption by Canadian Businesses, underscores how Gen AI can help tackle one of the most significant economic challenges facing Canadian prosperity and standard of life — low productivity — while also exploring what is holding Canadian businesses back from adopting AI technologies.
“Gen AI is a generational opportunity to boost Canadian productivity at a time when our performance is steadily headed in the wrong direction. The time to prompt productivity and act is now. Canadian businesses must innovate or die, and that means embracing Gen AI,” says Patrick Gill, the BDL’s Senior Director of Operations and Partnerships, and the report’s lead author. “ While adoption has begun in every industry, it’s likely not fast enough for Canada to be competitive on the global stage, especially since three in four Canadian businesses still haven’t tried Gen AI yet.”
The report provides concrete recommendations for both businesses and policymakers to accelerate Gen AI adoption in Canada. It examines and forecasts Gen AI adoption by Canadian businesses within the context of Canada’s productivity problem. In addition to identifying known barriers that hold businesses back from integrating new technologies, the report also offers a detailed breakdown of early Gen AI adoption by industry, geography and business size.
“What we’re seeing is that Gen AI adoption by Canadian businesses could reach a tipping point in the next three to six years. Depending on the pace of adoption, Canadian productivity could be boosted by one to six percent over a decade,” Gill asserts. “Our report shows that early adopters (one in seven businesses) are using Gen AI to accelerate the production and quality of their good and services. We hope these insights are a call to action for businesses and policymakers to collaborate on accelerating Gen AI adoption.”
Canadian businesses and policymakers must act swiftly to secure a competitive advantage for the sake of Canada’s economy, the Chamber states adding that with Gen AI emerging as a transformative, widely applicable technology across various sectors, there is no excuse for Canadian businesses to lag behind their global counterparts.
