The AI North Brief
15 Minutes. Every Weekday Morning. The AI Intelligence You Need.
Artificial Intelligence is evolving faster than our capability to understand its eventual impact. The AI North Brief is your daily filter, cutting through the noise to deliver only the essential news and policy shifts shaping Canada and the world.
Hosted by veteran news anchor and communications expert Paul Karwatsky, the show bridges the gap between the anchor desk and the cutting edge of AI governance. Currently pursuing his MS in AI Policy, Ethics, and Management at Purdue University, Paul brings a unique lens to the daily brief—combining decades of journalistic rigor with a deep, academic dive into the ethical frameworks and regulatory hurdles that will define the next decade.
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Episodes
18 episodes
The Compute Clock Starts
The deadline for Canada's sovereign AI data centre proposals closed on Saturday. For the past month, the federal government accepted pitches for projects over 100 megawatts, Canadian-controlled, designed to reduce dependence on foreign compute....
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7:07
The Sovereign Technology Alliance
DescriptionCanada and Germany signed an AI cooperation agreement at the Munich Security Conference, launching the Sovereign Technology Alliance. The deal focuses on compute infrastructure, AI research, and talent development. It e...
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Season 1
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6:24
Technofascism
Episode DescriptionA new paper just dropped in AI & Society with a provocative title: "Technofascism: AI, Big Tech, and the New Authoritarianism." Philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh argues that AI isn't politically neutral. The...
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9:01
When Seeing Stops Being Believing
Canadian security officials testified this week that AI deepfakes will "very likely" target the next federal election. Their solution? "Hopefully AI will help us detect AI. Hopefully." That's a lot of hope doing a lot of heavy lifting. Th...
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8:24
Selling AI Abroad While the Home Front Wavers
Canada is sending an AI delegation to the World Governments Summit in Dubai this week—over 200 companies applied to pitch Canadian AI solutions to 35 heads of state and 6,000 participants. The mission follows an October MOU between Minister Eva...
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6:31
The Profit Paradox: Why AI Ethics Principles Fail the Reality Test
Will a company ever voluntarily kill a machine that’s making them money?Ontario recently released joint principles for responsible AI use, including a bold requirement: organizations must be ready to "decommission" any AI system p...
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11:27
The Microsoft Problem
Episode DescriptionMicrosoft beat on every metric and the stock dropped six percent. What the earnings call revealed about AI infrastructure spending, OpenAI concentration risk, and why Canada's sovereign compute push faces a ...
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9:21
Delaware or Bust
Y Combinator has quietly removed Canada from its list of countries where it invests. Canadian startups now need to incorporate in the U.S., Cayman Islands, or Singapore to join the world's most prestigious accelerator. YC president Garry Tan co...
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5:44
Agents, Bets, and Alliances
Episode DescriptionShopify cuts jobs in its partnerships division as it restructures around "agentic commerce"—AI agents that shop on your behalf. The company launched Agentic Storefronts and co-developed Google's Universal Co...
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6:19
The Robots Aren't Coming: Canada's Physical AI Blind Spot
At CES 2026, NVIDIA declared "the ChatGPT moment for robotics is here." China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, 54% of the global total. Its operational stock now exceeds 2 million units, more than the rest of the world combined.
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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13:43
The Tale of Two TikToks: How Canada Blinked While America Bought
The US just closed a $14 billion forced divestiture of TikTok, requiring American ownership, algorithm retraining, and domestic data storage. Meanwhile, Canada scrapped its TikTok shutdown order and agreed to start the national security review ...
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8:25
Canada's China Pivot: What the Beijing Deal Means for AI
Prime Minister Mark Carney just returned from Beijing with a landmark trade deal—49,000 Chinese EVs at 6.1% tariffs in exchange for China dropping duties on Canadian canola. One year after calling China the "biggest threat" to Canada, Carney no...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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9:39
How to Avoid AI Scams in Canada: Tax Season Safety Guide 2026
Tax season 2026 brings new AI tools—and new AI scams. The CRA's Charlie chatbot got a $18M generative AI upgrade, but how do you know which AI tools to trust?In 2024, Canadians lost over $638 million to fraud, with AI making scams harder...
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10:22
Who Gets to Decide Canada's AI Future?
Canada's AI ministry used AI to analyze 11,300+ public consultation responses—despite internal warnings it could "further undermine public trust." This episode unpacks what happened when the federal government turned to Cohere, OpenAI, and Anth...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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11:38
The Infrastructure Trap: Is Canada Building the Wrong Thing?
AI North Brief | Episode 4: The Landlord TrapThe Lead Canada is committing billions to the Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, but a fundamental rift has emerged in the national AI Task Force. While Ottawa builds data cen...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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11:01
The Sovereignty Paradox: Can American Tech Giants Help Canada Go It Alone?
Canada wants digital sovereignty. OpenAI says it wants to help. But is that a contradiction in terms?In this episode, we unpack the tension at the heart of Canadian AI policy. OpenAI's Chris Lehane came to Toronto pitching partnership, w...
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10:57
Canada's Compute Crossroads: NVIDIA's Rubin Chip, Sovereign AI Investments, and the X/Grok Controversy
NVIDIA's Jensen Huang announces the Rubin platform at CES 2026, promising a tenfold reduction in AI token costs — just as Canada rolls out its $2.4 billion sovereign compute strategy. We break down the federal government's $42.5 million investm...
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9:54
The Great Canadian AI Reset: Evan Solomon, Bill C-27, and Ontario’s New Laws
Summary: As we enter 2026, Canada finds itself in a "legislative suspended animation." A full year after the collapse of Bill C-27, the federal regulatory landscape remains a blank slate—but the provinces and the watchdogs aren't waiting...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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13:25