What happened: Deloitte Canada’s latest tech predictions report highlights potential behind artificial intelligence and private 5g networks
Why it matters: The B.C. tech sector poised to seize on a number of the trends forecast to pick up in 2020
Canada is not quite No. 1 in the world for deploying artificial intelligence but Duncan Stewart predicts the country will continue punching above its weight into 2020.
“Canada’s probably top 5 in the world in this,” says the co-author of Deloitte Canada’s annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions report.
That’s why the country is poised to make the most out of the biggest trends forecast for 2020: a rapid burst in sales of AI chips.
Deloitte predicts 750 million AI chips will be sold next year, generating US$2.6 billion in revenue.
That’s double the number of chips sold in 2017.
“Now those chips are not being made by Canadians — those chips will be used by Canadians,” said Stewart, Deloitte Canada’s director of research for TMT.
“Historically, all AI occurred at the core of the network in the data centre. And what we’re looking at now is a new generation of chips that will allow people to do some of the AI processing on the edge device, whether that’s a smartphone, a robot, a camera, a senor, a drone.”
Regarding Stewart’s assertion of Canada’s AI prowess, an April global talent report from Montreal-based Element AI ranked the country as the fifth largest hub for AI jobs (4%) when measured by the number of researchers whose works are published in accepted publications.
He said that the proliferation of chips would help “change the game” for businesses pursuing much faster computations.
Meanwhile, the Deloitte report also predicts private 5G networks — not to be confused with the public 5G infrastructure that’s been hitting bumps in the road in Canada — will take off in 2020.
But Stewart calls the deployment of private 5G a “game-changer” as companies and organizations build out their own networks.
“The public consumer side is not that interesting. 5G is largely about higher capacity and higher speeds … and most consumers don’t need that level,” he told Business in Vancouver.
Deloitte predicts more than 100 companies worldwide will start testing private 5G by the end of next year, with some doing it on their own and others partnering with telecoms.
“If you’re worried about things like security, privacy, cyber attacks [then] building your own network that is not shared and is not connected to the public network in any way is inherently more private more secure,” Stewart said.
And despite Vancouver widely being considered a top hub for virtual reality development, Stewart is skeptical the technology will take off anytime soon.
“Anything that involves goggles is unequivocally — within the world I look at — is considered a non-starter,” he said.
“The companies in that space who target the consumer are all now sort of pivoting to the enterprise. But even the enterprise market is tiny.”
