Montréal, Quebec
As increasingly capable artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more autonomous, Canada and Germany are investing in a fundamentally new approach: advanced AI designed from the outset to be transparent, trustworthy and safe.
Today, at the ALL IN conference, the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, and Dr. Karsten Wildberger, Germany's Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, announced that the Government of Canada and the Federal Government of Germany are planning to invest CAD 150 million and EUR 100 million, respectively, in LawZero to develop a fundamentally new form of advanced AI, designed to be trustworthy, safe and capable. This joint investment further strengthens cooperation between Canada and Germany on AI.
Headquartered in Montréal, LawZero is a not-for-profit organization developing a novel approach to advanced AI that is designed to be trustworthy, transparent and safe by design. Canada's funding through the Strategic Response Fund will support research and engineering talent, as well as computing capacity, for LawZero's methodology, Scientist AI. Unlike current frontier AI systems designed to act autonomously or pursue objectives, Scientist AI is being developed to reason transparently and provide reliable, evidence-based outputs that are not biased by goals of its own.
By anchoring critical research, talent and computing capacity in Canada, the project will strengthen Canada's technological sovereignty and reduce reliance on foreign-controlled AI systems. The project will create 360 full-time jobs in Canada and will establish a dedicated, sovereign computing infrastructure in partnership with Canadian leaders Hypertec and 5C.
The funding from Germany is subject to notification by the European Commission and will support research and development being undertaken at LawZero's new German office. This funding will not only expand and speed up the overall project but also ensure that European norms and regulations in the field of AI can be incorporated from the outset of the project. LawZero's work will begin with the development of tools to help assess and oversee existing AI systems and support scientific research, while advancing toward a new methodology for safe-by-design frontier models.
Today's announcement deepens Canada's ties with Germany on developing AI, building on the two countries' Joint Declaration of Intent on Artificial Intelligence and the launch of the Sovereign Technology Alliance, which were announced in February. The project will also make a significant contribution to German and European strategies for safe and trustworthy AI. It also advances Canada's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All by strengthening the country's long-term capacity to develop and deploy safe, homegrown AI systems.
