Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials HomeFinanceBankingScotiabank teams up with other Canadian companies to meet their AI needs faster, cheaperThe companies hope the new consortium can resolve common AI-related problems that all companies expect to faceLast updated 1 hour ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Scotiabank's chief information officer said the lender has made some attempts to resolve AI and tech challenges on its own, but found it difficult. Photo by Galit Rodan/BloombergBank of Nova Scotia is teaming up with three other companies to build and share infrastructure related to artificial intelligence in order to help them deploy the technology faster, more safely and at a lower cost.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorScotiabank, Sun Life Financial Inc., Telus Corp. and Toronto-based AI consultant Lightworks launched a consortium on Tuesday that will allow their engineers to jointly develop AI systems that each organization will own and can tailor to their needs.“We believe that by working together, we can learn from one another and accelerate faster than any one of us could alone,” Laura Money, chief information and technology innovation officer at Sun Life, said. “There’s a cost factor there as well.”Breaking business news, incisive views, must-reads and market signals. Weekdays by 9 a.m.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Posthaste will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe consortium is based on a “first-of-its-kind” model, the companies say, as businesses look for ways to use AI to boost productivity. Canada’s biggest banks in recent quarters have been highlighting how AI is helping them save time and resources and they’re also banking on it to improve their earnings.The group’s key project, the Agenda Control Plane, helps companies control the different AI applications they use on one platform. The system is already being used to handle more than two trillion pieces of AI-generated data each month for its members, allowing them to see what their AI agents are doing, control how they behave and scale what’s working.Hesham Fahmy, chief information officer at Telus, said the defining challenge in AI is no longer building the technology, but controlling and governing it at scale.“As we pushed AI deeper across Telus, we kept running into the same fundamental governance and operational management problems that every major regulated institution in Canada is wrestling with,” he said. “With the AI Consortium, Canada’s largest companies are joining forces to solve these challenges together for the first time.”Scotiabank’s chief information officer, Tim Clark, said the lender has made some attempts to resolve such challenges, but found it difficult.“This actually is helping me replace some of the technologies that I was going to try to build or buy myself with a much more sturdy and, I would say, more well-thought-out ecosystem that I can then expand out even further to solve a lot of these different control problems,” he said.The members of the consortium will also own the intellectual property of the systems that they are creating, Lightworks chief executive John Painter said.Other businesses can also be a part of the new consortium by paying a membership fee, he said, giving them access to all the engineering talent that the companies have, which is quite substantial.Clark said the consortium’s control plane project is something every company is going to “want and desire and need.” Companies can either try to build it themselves, lease it from a certain set of companies or join the consortium and then expand it for each company’s respective needs.“If you look at AI, frankly, and how it has evolved, everybody has moved from pilot through to some level of agent-based workflows,” he said. “This is the control plane that runs all of that world as it gets more and more complicated.”Clark also said the consortium has “racked their brains,” but hasn’t found anything that’s obviously similar to it in Canada.Money, however, compared the new group to Symcor Inc., a company Canada’s biggest banks created in 1996 to prevent them from duplicating efforts when it came to processing cheques.“That consortium was an interesting precedent in Canada since competitors came together to solve a common problem,” she said. “It was the strength of cooperating that really strengthened the industry as a whole.”The four companies hope the new consortium can resolve common AI-related problems that all companies expect to face.“Canadian companies in their domicile finding ways to actually ensure that we protect Canadian interests is really high on all of our agendas,” Clark said. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.