As soon as the decision was made to legalize cannabis in Canada I had clients, friends and neighbours ask me about ‘pot stocks’. Some people want to lead the way in new opportunities (early adopters), and other people are naturally more inclined to hang back to watch what happens. Of course, I’m interested in the topic from an investment and risk perspective.
Last summer I met up with a long-time colleague and friend for coffee. He told me about his work in enhanced due diligence for cannabis companies and how his company was using artificial intelligence/machine learning in the investigative process. So naturally I invited him to bring his experience to my podcast and the Elevated Conversations we’re having.
Chris Pierre is the Managing Director of KeyNorth Group, an investigative services and open source intelligence training company that serves both the public and private sectors. Chris holds a BA in Political Science from Carleton University along with a post graduate diploma in business from Humber College. He is a certified information systems security professional and a certified fraud examiner. Chris has been an instructor in OSINT (open source intelligence training) at the Canadian Police College since 2000. Prior to founding the KeyNorth Group he worked for several other investigation and intelligence firms in Toronto and Ottawa. Prior to that he was an investment advisor, which is how we originally met.
I interviewed Chris on yesterday’s episode of I’m a Millionaire! So Now What? (EP 17). I invite you to listen & subscribe here.
Chris told me about his work with ‘new frontier investment opportunities’, which is exactly what the cannabis industry is right now. Before an organisation gets into business with a company in the cannabis space they can hire KeyNorth Group to review the background of the individuals involved in that business. In the venture capital area of corporate finance, it’s standard practice to conduct investigations like these. KeyNorth clients want to ensure that the businesses they plan to partner with aren’t involved in activities that might be a business or reputational risk or open them up to litigation down the road. While enhanced due diligence is common right now in the cannabis space, KeyNorth Group has clients across all industries and around the world.
During our discussion, Chris explained that a lot of investigative research now is ‘open source’ – that is, a thorough review of information that’s available in the public domain. That could be social media, public records like land titles or bankruptcy records, or other sorts of information that are accessible through technology. With so much open source data, Artificial Intelligence plays an important role.
For example, AI can review a great deal of information – far more than a team of humans, and can pick out patterns or anomalies much more quickly than humans.
This is particularly useful in high-volume transaction organisations like banks and on-line retailers like Amazon. If you’ve ever been contacted by your credit card company because someone has flagged an unusual purchase or a purchase in an unusual place, you can thank AI for noting what’s normal spending behaviour for you, and for spotting the deviation from your regular pattern.
You can also thank AI for providing you with targeted ads on your favourite social media channels. Like when you’ve been searching for ‘office chairs’ online and then suddenly your Facebook feed is filled with ads for office equipment.
Which prompted Chris to offer some advice:
“I would suggest folks go onto whatever social media platforms they’re on and check out the data use policy of that platform. you don’t have to read the whole thing to get a sense of it: you can just read the headings. Just get a sense of what information you’re disclosing when you’re on those sites and see whether or not it causes you to adjust your settings or think about different ways you might want to use the sites.”
I’ve got another deep dive into Artificial Intelligence over the next few weeks of I’m a Millionaire! So Now What? so please join me for upcoming podcast episodes.
And if you want to learn still more, Erin Kelly, President and CEO of Advanced Symbolics – a company that uses Artificial Intelligence to measure human behavior and predict outcomes -- is our special guest at the next LIVE Elevated Conversations dinner party. If you’ll be in the Ottawa area on November 21st, reach out to express your interest in attending to me at colleen.campbell@rbc.com . This event is by invite only, so please apply for your spot at the table through me.