Ottawa-based artificial intelligence (AI) governance firm NuEnergy has announced that it can now sell its AI governance solutions to government departments and crown corporations. The announcement comes as governments worldwide start to investigate the technology’s risks to privacy, national security and the education system as a raft of generative AI products see the light of day.
To sell its innovations to the government of Canada, NuEnergy successfully completed the ISC Testing Stream and passed the Path to Commercialization (PTC) acceptance requirements. The PTC program is designed to streamline the process for qualified Canadian start-ups to sell their innovations to the government, after extensive testing.
The framework provides a 3-year procurement vehicle with direct-buy contracts for all interested government departments to purchase NuEnergy’s solutions, particularly its cloud-based software, Machine Trust Platform (MTP), which allows tech leaders to measure trust parameters including privacy, ethics, transparency, and bias, and protect against risks of AI drift.
MTP also evaluates compliance with global standards and evolving legislation including the Government of Canada Algorithmic Impact Assessment (AIA).
“This is a big win for the entire NuEnergy team, and for all those concerned about the ethics of AI,” stated Niraj Bhargava, chief executive officer of NuEnergy. “We are ready to bring our Machine Trust Platform to more departments within the Government of Canada.”
The use of advanced technologies by law enforcement and other government agencies is key, but it’s also essential to have checks and balances to make sure that AI is being used responsibly, Bhargava stated. He added that the government should be held to a higher standard in regards to its use of AI.
“There are many stakeholders for every organization, but for the government, the public is the stakeholder and we know, as citizens ourselves, that we want transparency and we want to trust the government.”
Governance for NuEnergy, Bhargava explained, starts with building an understanding of the nature of the organization, their knowledge of AI, their use cases and where they are in the life cycle of these technologies. Second, NuEnergy creates a practical framework for the organization – the AI governance questions and guardrails would be different in a tech company than in a bank or health care organization. Finally, NuEnergy monitors AI activity and risks.
Earlier this year, NuEnergy also upgraded MTP to allow board oversight by senior corporate leaders and Risk Committee members. This move sought to help board leaders incorporate AI and data governance into their risk management strategies.
NuEnergy has a distributed team based in Ottawa, Waterloo, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
