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Government of Canada announces Canadian AI Safety Institute - CIFAR
webThis announcement marks Canada's formal entry into the international network of government-backed AI Safety Institutes, relevant context for understanding global AI governance coordination and institutional landscape as of late 2024.
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Summary
The Canadian government announced the creation of the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI), to be housed at CIFAR, focused on evaluating AI risks and supporting safe AI development. The institute will conduct research on AI safety evaluation, red-teaming, and testing of frontier AI systems. This positions Canada alongside similar institutes in the UK and US in the international AI safety governance landscape.
Key Points
- •Canada launches the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI), hosted at CIFAR, to evaluate risks from advanced AI systems.
- •CAISI will focus on red-teaming, benchmarking, and evaluation of frontier AI models for safety properties.
- •The institute is part of a broader international effort, aligning with the UK AISI and US AISI in collaborative safety research.
- •CAISI aims to provide independent technical expertise to inform Canadian government AI policy and regulation.
- •Announcement reflects growing government recognition of AI safety as a national priority requiring dedicated institutional infrastructure.
1 FactBase fact citing this source
| Entity | Property | Value | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canadian AI Safety Institute | Funding Received | C$27 million | Mar 2025 |
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Government of Canada announces Canadian AI Safety Institute – CIFAR
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AI and Society
Government of Canada announces Canadian AI Safety Institute
By: Justine Brooks
12 Nov, 2024
November 12, 2024
Also announced is the creation of the CAISI Research Program at CIFAR
Today in Montréal, the Government of Canada announced the creation of the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI), which will include a focused research program at CIFAR. The announcement comes following the previously announced $50M investment in AI safety made in April, a central tenet of the Bletchley Declaration to which Canada has committed its efforts.
The Canadian AI Safety Institute will be led by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. It will work collaboratively with AI safety institutes around the world to form a global understanding of AI risks. The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) will implement a government-directed research program, with international collaboration, to focus on government priorities like cybersecurity and national security.
A key component of the new institute is the CAISI Research Program at CIFAR , which will build a focused research community on AI safety across Canada. Funded by a $27M contribution to CIFAR from the Government of Canada, the CAISI Research Program will be steered by CIFAR with close collaborations with research institutions across the country, in particular Canada’s three National AI Institutes: Mila in Montréal, Amii in Edmonton and the Vector Institute in Toronto.
The program will further the research Canada’s experts have already started in areas of AI safety, such as detecting AI-generated disinformation, ensuring the safe adoption of AI in high-risk applications such as health care and ensuring privacy in AI systems. The work will take a multidisciplinary approach, engaging experts from diverse fields to mitigate and address both the short and long-term risk of AI systems.
The initial roadmap for setting priority areas of inquiry of the program will be the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI , a global initiative being led by Turing award winner Yoshua Bengio, who is the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila, a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and Co-Director of the CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains program.
The CAISI Research Program will be guided by the CAISI Research Council, a group of experts with diverse expertise, including researchers and representatives from CIFAR, the NRC, and Canada’s three National AI Institutes. Three open positions for Members at Large are now posted .
Learn more about the CAISI Research Program at CIFAR.
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“The Canadian Institute for Artificial Intelligence S
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