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With a tech industry one-third the size of California’s, Canada has confounded expectations by becoming a leader in the booming market for artificial intelligence. Pioneering technologies developed in Canadian labs can be found in Facebook’s facial recognition algorithms, Google’s Photos app, smartphone voice recognition and even Japanese robots.

Now Canada risks losing its AI edge to Silicon Valley.

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Several leading Canadian researchers and professors have defected to U.S. tech companies such as Google. Top U.S. universities are scooping up AI experts, too. They’re in hot demand because the emerging technology will underpin the next wave of innovation — from self-driving cars and personal assistants to smarter prosthetic limbs and industrial robots.

“We are losing our top talent, the talent at every level,” says Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “While we had that advantage, it is slipping through our fingers.”