Isaac Phan Nay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

Sporting a black T-shirt and slacks, artificial-intelligence startup worker Sigrid Jin walked onstage for a live interview last Monday in front of the few thousand tech workers, founders and investors gathered in Vancouver.

The startup software worker — initially famous for being one of the top users of Anthropic’s coding assistant, Claude Code — had recently upturned the tech world by rewriting the software’s source code in a matter of hours.

Monday was the opening night of Web Summit Vancouver, an annual conference of more than 20,000 software and startup industry folk.

That evening, Jin was onstage in the Vancouver Convention Centre for an interview about how Jin and another developer used 10 AI agents to make an open-source alternative to Claude Code almost overnight.

Jin said maximizing their use of AI — or “tokenmaxxing,” in reference to the currency that programs like Claude Code use to manage usage — was key to their success.

“I always try to tell my friends, ‘Spend as much on AI as you pay for your own house rent,’ because it’s really getting important, because you can get a return on investment,” Jin said. “You can run multiple businesses. You can delegate your work.”

And while Jin’s AI usage tops the charts, the developer’s story marks a sea change in the expectations for tech workers.

By using tools like Claude Code, software developers across the world have been able to massively increase their output in a short amount of time.

Now, employers across industries are looking for similar gains.

A recent KPMG survey of 306 Canadian executives found that two-thirds of respondents said their organization was making progress toward becoming a fully integrated AI-human workforce.

Lewis Curley, a partner in KPMG Canada’s people and change consulting practice, said that’s partly because AI tools, sometimes referred to as AI “agents,” can help employees increase their output.

“It enables you to scale your organization, to deliver more value through the implementation of agents and give your workers, team and employees new skills more rapidly,” he said.

That’s despite a third of respondents reporting employee resistance. The survey comes while huge employers, including software companies, banks and even the federal government, have been investing in artificial intelligence while laying off hundreds of Canadians.

It’s a trend Ottawa is publicly backing.

Cheyenne Daly, a spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, said in an email the federal government will support “accelerated adoption” among small and medium-sized businesses.

“A key pillar of the government’s AI for All Strategy will be powering AI adoption for shared prosperity,” Daly said. “The gains of AI will come from putting it to work across the Canadian economy and developing pro-worker, industrial AI technologies.”

AI Minister Solomon: ‘We’re at a unique moment’

Back at Web Summit, after Jin’s interview, federal Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon walked onstage for a conversation about the importance of building Canada’s ability to develop, use and govern AI.

“This is the moment to build,” he told conference goers. “Building is the response to how we want to control and build the world we want to live in. We’re at a unique moment.”

While the minister has yet to release his much-delayed and long-promised artificial intelligence strategy, Solomon spent last week dropping clues about how the federal government plans to incubate the technology.

The morning of the conference, the federal AI minister announced Ottawa will back Telus’s plans to develop an AI data centre in Kamloops, another in downtown Vancouver and a third in the Mount Pleasant building that formerly housed Hootsuite.

The federal government has earmarked more than $2 billion to invest into artificial intelligence research and development, including $700 million for data centres and investing in private sector AI companies.

“AI is a general-purpose technology with broad applicability and transformational potential, capable of reshaping how Canadians work, interact and engage in everyday life,” Daly said.

She added the federal government has also committed to making programs available to help train workers for the technology’s impact on workplaces. Daly offered Canada’s “Skills for Success” initiative, which highlights the importance of skills like reading, writing and oral communication, as an example.

“As AI continues to evolve, initiatives such as Skills for Success are well positioned to assist workers and employers, particularly [small-to-medium-sized enterprises], develop the foundational and transferable skills needed to effectively utilize AI,” she said. “Canada will continue to position itself as a leading destination for AI research and talent to help sustain a strong pipeline of skilled workers and expertise.”

Layoffs underscore employee worries

The investments come while several federal government departments are beginning to use in-house AI tools to speed up work such as censoring personal information from documents, streamlining IT issue tickets and retrieving information from databases.

Data suggests hundreds of companies are following a similar trend. The KPMG survey of executives, published last month, found that 74 per cent of respondents said AI will continue to be a top investment priority even if there’s a recession.

Curley, whose job includes advising companies on how to successfully implement AI, said it’s key for organizations to consider the unique knowledge and interpersonal, creative and leadership skills that employees bring to an organization and ensure the workers can lean into those skills assisted by AI agents.

“I always say a successful AI uptake really starts with the people first,” he said.

Still, survey respondents reported significant employee resistance to adopting AI tools. Of the 31 per cent who said employees are resistant to AI integration, 39 per cent said they were concerned about job security.

These concerns are not unfounded. The survey comes after several employers laid off hundreds of workers while ramping up spending on artificial intelligence, including Vancouver’s Klue, Waterloo, Ontario’s OpenText and the federal government.

Meanwhile, half of executives who reported employee resistance said it was because of trust, ethical or transparency concerns.

According to Curley, that means business leaders need to be transparent about how they hope to use the technology and how employees will be expected to change their jobs.

“Resistance isn’t necessarily an obstacle; it’s a signal,” Curley said. “It is easy to maintain the status quo, and whether it’s a large change, as AI seems to be, or something smaller, there’s often resistance.”

Curley said that while there may continue to be layoffs, he does not believe Canada is on the brink of a “job-pocalypse,” or massive displacement of workers for AI.

“I don’t think it’s taking the jobs,” he said. “I think it is changing the needs of those jobs, and we are in a transitional phase.”

From designing to delegating

Curley said some companies are recognizing that these tools can consume data and identify patterns in data faster than people can, and are shifting the burden of those tasks away from people.

For example, he said, the demands for entry-level white-collar workers are changing at his company.

Whereas five years ago a junior employee at KPMG might be expected to build spreadsheets or spend time making PowerPoint presentations, Curley said, now they’re expected to delegate some of the more time-consuming tasks to AI tools where appropriate.

Curley said at his company, that shift means interns and junior employees get to spend more time meeting clients and building relationships.

“What that means is you’re more likely to be leading a team of agents earlier in your career,” he said. “Before, it might have been like 10 years before you became a manager. Now it’s like, ‘Day 1, here is your team to manage. Off you go.’”

Learn more about our News Monitoring here.

---