Business Data Lab Report Projects Gen AI Tipping Point for Businesses. Faster Adoption Needed to Rescue Canada from Its Productivity Emergency.

[OTTAWA] — [May 22, 2024] — The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business Data Lab (BDL) released a report today detailing the sluggish adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) among Canadian businesses, and how a multitude of barriers, along with a lack of trust in the new technology, could impede the adoption levels needed to improve Canada’s economic growth.

The report, Prompting Productivity: Generative AI Adoption by Canadian Businesses, underscores how Gen AI can help tackle one of the most significant economic challenges facing Canadian prosperity and standard of life — low productivity — while also exploring what is holding Canadian businesses back from adopting AI technologies.

Gen AI is a generational opportunity to boost Canadian productivity at a time when our performance is steadily headed in the wrong direction. The time to prompt productivity and act is now. Canadian businesses must innovate or die, and that means embracing Gen AI. While adoption has begun in every industry, it’s likely not fast enough for Canada to be competitive on the global stage, especially since three in four Canadian businesses still haven’t tried Gen AI yet.

Patrick Gill, the BDL’s Senior Director of Operations and Partnerships, and the report’s lead author

The report provides concrete recommendations for both businesses and policymakers to accelerate Gen AI adoption in Canada. It examines and forecasts Gen AI adoption by Canadian businesses within the context of Canada’s productivity problem. In addition to identifying known barriers that hold businesses back from integrating new technologies, the report also offers a detailed breakdown of early Gen AI adoption by industry, geography and business size.

What we’re seeing is that Gen AI adoption by Canadian businesses could reach a tipping point in the next three to six years. Depending on the pace of adoption, Canadian productivity could be boosted by one to six percent over a decade. Our report shows that early adopters (one in seven businesses) are using Gen AI to accelerate the production and quality of their good and services. We hope these insights are a call to action for businesses and policymakers to collaborate on accelerating Gen AI adoption.

Patrick Gill, the BDL’s Senior Director of Operations and Partnerships, and the report’s lead author

Canadian businesses and policymakers must act swiftly to secure a competitive advantage for the sake of Canada’s economy. With Gen AI emerging as a transformative, widely applicable technology across various sectors, there is no excuse for Canadian businesses to lag behind their global counterparts.

Key findings from the report

• Roughly 1 in 7 Canadian businesses (14%) are early Gen AI adopters. They are found within every Canadian industry and region, but are more likely to be exporters, larger businesses, industries with highly educated workers or emerging enterprises.
• Larger businesses are nearly twice as likely to use Gen AI than small businesses.
• On its current trajectory, Gen AI adoption by Canadian businesses could reach a tipping in the next 3 to 6 years — likely too slow to keep pace with global competitors.
• Depending on the rate of adoption, Gen AI could grow Canada’s productivity between 1% and 6% over the next decade.
• The factor of “trust” will be important for future adoption, with public interest and acceptance of AI likely being positively correlated with countries’ business adoption rates. Global IPSOS surveys reveal that Canadians are less knowledgeable and more nervous about AI than citizens of most other countries.
• Most businesses using Gen AI are predominately looking to accelerate content creation (69%) and automate work without job cuts (46%).
• Roughly 3 in 10 businesses cite hiring skilled employees and access to finance as top challenges to adopting new technologies.
• Almost 3 in 4 Canadian businesses (73%) have not even considered using Gen AI yet.
• It is recommended that Canadian businesses move fast to adopt Gen AI to gain a competitive advantage over global competitors. This means starting with small-scale pilot projects to validate the feasibility and impact of Gen AI before gradually expand to larger initiatives based on successful proofs of concept, all while training and preparing employees for the adoption of Gen AI.
• For its part, government can support Gen AI adoption by upskilling workers, setting adoption targets, tapping the private sector, and among other actions, ensuring regulation is proportionate and risk-based.

About the Canadian Chamber of Commerce — The Future of Business Success
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is Canada’s largest and most activated business network — representing over 400 chambers of commerce and boards of trade and more than 200,000 business of all sizes, from all sectors of the economy and from every part of the country — working to create the conditions for our collective success. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is the undisputed champion and catalyst for the future of business success. From working with government on economy-friendly policy to providing services that inform commerce and enable trade, we give each of our members more of what they need to succeed: insight into markets, competitors and trends, influence over the decisions and policies that drive business success and impact on business and economic performance.

Contact
Karl Oczkowski
Senior Director, Corporate Communications and PR
613.238.4000 (2231)
koczkowski@chamber.ca