Terry Dimock
Hello, we're here today to talk about artificial intelligence and we're with Charles Nadim from Jarislowsky Fraser. Hi, Charles.
Charles Nadim
Hi, Terry, good to see you.
Terry Dimock
Nice to see you. So maybe if we start more on the basics, artificial intelligence, we've been hearing a lot about it last few months, but is it really new? And maybe you could give us some insight, I keep hearing the acronym LLM. What does that mean? And how does that impact artificial intelligence?
Charles Nadim
Sure. Artificial intelligence has existed for decades. We use it in our day-to-day lives. If you're a user of Netflix or you search on Wayfair, they use AI to kind of predict what could be interesting for you to watch based on previous patterns. That's a form of AI. What's more recent is this whole learning language model. Why has it happened here suddenly? Well, actually, it's been decades and billions of dollars of R&D that companies like NVIDIA have spent with coming up with chips and software that are more adapted to this type of AI solution. So that's, if you've heard about chat GPT, that has come as a result of the NVIDIA investments in AI hardware. Now, what is a learning language model? Basically, what it does is it conducts a probability of distribution of words. Simply put, it tries to predict the next word based on a sentence and the context of the phrase so that this whole phrase.
Charles Nadim
uh... makes actual sense so it analyzes millions and billions of pages to come up with an answer that is quite coherent and uh... precise that's the new piece.
Terry Dimock
So, you know, with the right questions or depending on my behaviour online, you know, these models can predict what the answer should be or what my next behaviour should be.
Charles Nadim
Correct.
Terry Dimock
Interesting. You know, I hear from clients asking, how can I invest in this? Is it only the large American companies? Or are there companies in Canada that I can invest in to take advantage of this new theme?
Charles Nadim
Sure. We’re kind of fortunate in Canada because we have some of the global leaders in AI. If I just give you examples of broad AI, supply chain software, and getting a product from point A to point B. Historically, it used to be like the GPS systems we have in our cars. They always project or send you the same way. Whereas if you take a company like Kinaxis, which is the global leader in supply chain software using AI, or Descartes, which is the global leader in the last mile getting the package to your door.
What they do is a bit more equivalent to a Waze on your application. So, they will adapt the flow of the traffic based on prediction and live events that are happening in the system. So that is a way more efficient way of managing supply chains. Another example is about a company like Thomson, which is a large-cap Canadian company. It has the largest database for lawyers and tax professionals. 150 years of cases that they've spent millions and billions paying attorneys to kind of input annotations, headnotes, and summaries. Well, if you think about these LLM models, they will be able to study 150 years of historical cases and come up with a summary or draft a legal document. So, it's going to help Thompson save some money while getting you the right answers.
Information Management in the World is a Canadian company. Well, they're going to be using AI to take the information that is sitting in your databases and when you put in a question, it will give you an answer without having to call somebody or do a lot of searches on your own. Banks will be using this. So, think about, I call a bank, I want to open a bank account, or I have a question.
Well, that person on the other line, they type the question, they get some documents, they try to read them at the same time. Whereas now the tool will do this for you. They'll analyze millions and billions of pages to come up with a very concise answer, even in a bullet-point format if you press that button. So, it's quite impressive. It's going to make companies more productive and the answers more precise.
Terry Dimock
So, a lot of changes to come in our personal lives and our professional lives because of this technology. And interesting to see all these Canadian companies that we can invest in. I think active management research into the companies that are available can find opportunities and let investors prosper along with this new theme in the industry. So, thank you very much, Charles, for being with us today, and thank you to everyone for listening.
Charles Nadim
Thank you, Terry. Thanks for having me. Have a good day.
