A working concept note from the BC + AI Ecosystem Think-Tank
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Universities, Crown corps, SMEs, Nations, and global allies are invited to critique, co-author, or claim pieces of this architecture. Everything is iterated in the o
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Finance Minister Brenda Bailey, speaking at the Dillon Centre summit, sketched a tantalising but unfinished thought:
“Before we beg Ottawa for an ‘AI institute’, we need to ask: Do we actually need one? If yes, it has to be laser-specific—something only B.C. can deliver. My hunch? An institute where AI collides with industrial tech: manufacturing, resource sectors, the gritty work nobody else is optimising.”
Our community shares that hunch. This paper braids Bailey’s call for focus with the BC + AI ecosystem’s on-the-ground knowledge to articulate an idea worth co-building—first with local partners, then with provincial and federal funders when the alignment is right.
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A hydro-powered, Indigenous-governed Industrial AI Centre in B.C. will turn frontier algorithms into productivity and decarbonisation wins across Canada’s real-economy sectors—and give Ottawa a ready-made playbook to scale nationwide.
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