Anthropic expands Canadian footprint with AI training program

San Francisco-based Anthropic PBC and a Toronto-based charity are teaming up on a program designed to teach Canadians how to use artificial intelligence to build one-person companies.

Venture for Canada on Thursday said Canadians will get access to an Anthropic Claude Max licence during the six-week program to help them turn their ideas into a viable one-person business.

Venture for Canada chief executive Steven Wang said the training will be comprehensive and include guidance on how to adopt the tech effectively and responsibly.

Anthropic previously committed $10 million in Claude credits to Canadian research institutes in July. Canada’s three national AI institutes — Edmonton’s Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), Quebec’s Mila and Toronto’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence — will receive $1 million each in credits to work on AI safety research and applying the tech to industries like robotics and healthcare.

Anthropic will also provide at least US$5,000 in Claude credits to startups affiliated with the national AI institutes to help them build their businesses.

OpenAI LLC has pursued a similar playbook, offering free credits for its AI tools to startups enrolled in Creative Destruction Lab, a non-profit accelerator for early stage science- and technology-focused startups. The ChatGPT maker said it will provide credits to more than 700 startups and work with a select group of “high-performing companies” to help them bring to market and scale their AI products.

But some technology policy watchers say that there could be tradeoffs to such arrangements.

Vass Bednar, managing director at the Canadian Shield Institute, a policy-focused think tank, said such arrangements entrench the positions of the leading AI labs and quash competition.

“When technology firms offer free credits dressed up as investment, they are trying to set themselves up as a dominant player in this technology,” she said.

Wendy Wong, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia and author of We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, said the deals give Canadian companies access to advanced AI they may find expensive or difficult to access, but they could create dependencies on specific AI systems.

The Canadian organizations partnering with the U.S. AI giants say that strategies are in place to ensure businesses aren’t locked into one model provider and to help ensure their gains stay in Canada.

“Access is not dependence,” Ajay Agrawal, founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and a professor and Geoffrey Taber chair in entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Toronto, said. “Free credits lower the cost of experimentation, which is enormously valuable for startups.”