Alberta’s AI legacy runs deep
As Canada’s tech community gathers for Elevate Festival, which runs from Oct. 7, conversations about artificial intelligence are taking centre stage. Alberta’s long history with AI research provides a unique backdrop for a new generation of founders who are translating theory into practical tools. The festival spotlights a trailblazer at the intersection of academic research and game design: Alex Kearney, an AI researcher with ties to DeepMind, Twitter, and the University of Alberta, who cofounded Artificial Agency to build an AI-powered “behaviour engine” for video games.
Alex Kearney: from DeepMind scientist to founder of Artificial Agency
Kearney will be at Elevate next week, discussing the surprising and vital links between gaming and AI research. Her path—from academia to entrepreneurship—illustrates a broader trend in Alberta and Canada: researchers translating theoretical breakthroughs into tools that empower designers. “The transition to running a company changes how you think about problems,” she notes, stressing that the focus shifts from pure discovery to delivering practical capabilities that unlock new genres and experiences for game developers.
Turning research into usable tools
After a decade-plus in AI, Kearney now aims to equip designers with AI agents and automation that accelerate creativity. The goal is not just smarter NPCs, but enabling studios to imagine and realize ideas they hadn’t contemplated before. When new teams adopt the company’s tools, Kearney loves watching the spark of inspiration light up a room—the moment a designer realizes, “I can do this.”
Why gaming is a natural proving ground for AI agents
Games have long served as a test bed for AI agents. From achieving superhuman play in Atari classics to strategies in complex titles like StarCraft, these milestones demonstrate progress toward more capable systems. For Kearney, play is fundamental to intelligence: it’s how we learn and how we perceive intelligent behavior. She also sees a future where chat interfaces—driven by language models—allow broader audiences to interact with AI in a universal medium. Through games, the public can experience what intelligent systems feel like in a controlled, understandable environment.
Edmonton and Alberta: a deep-rooted AI ecosystem
One of the recurring themes at Elevate is Alberta’s long tradition of AI research. The province has been an AI research hub for more than a quarter-century, with machine learning and reinforcement learning core to its academic strength. Recent years have seen renewed investments from universities and provincial initiatives aimed at broadening AI across disciplines. The message is clear: Alberta’s ecosystem isn’t just history—it’s a living pipeline feeding startups, researchers, and policy makers alike.
A Canadian startup landscape: advantages, pitfalls, and the road ahead
Kearney cites a distinctly Canadian posture: a can-do attitude paired with humility. The advantage of building in Alberta is a pragmatic environment that avoids hype while maintaining ambitious goals. Yet humility carries a risk: it can dampen celebrations and visibility. Elevate, she suggests, helps counteract that by providing platforms to showcase wins, attract talent, and encourage investment. This visibility is vital in a country where “brain drain” to the U.S. is a concern for some researchers.
Elevate as a catalyst for Canadian innovation
Events like Elevate are more than summits; they’re catalysts for collaboration among researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs. By bringing together policy leaders from Cohere and OpenAI, researchers like Meta’s Setor Zilevu, and industry leaders such as Spotify’s David Nyhan, the festival creates a cross-pollination that helps translate Alberta’s AI strengths into national and international impact. For Kearney, these gatherings offer proof points that demonstrate to the next generation what is possible in Canada—encouraging them to stay, build, and scale at home.
Conclusion: building on a strong AI foundation
As Alberta continues to build on a deep AI legacy, founders like Alex Kearney show how research can become practical, game-changing technology. Elevate Festival serves as a stage not just to celebrate achievement but to accelerate it—bridging academia, industry, and policy to keep Canada at the forefront of AI innovation in gaming and beyond.
