Canada needs to nurture local tech champions and protect research, says AI pioneer
MONTREAL — Some of the biggest names in tech are lining up to join Montreal’s burgeoning artificial intelligence cluster, but harnessing the sector’s full potential depends on creating homegrown tech champions, not just celebrating investments by large multinationals, warns one of Canada’s godfathers of deep learning.
Canada is at the centre of research charting new ways to mine big data with implications for everything from better medical diagnoses to self-driving cars and Montreal is emerging as a hub thanks to a large concentration of available researchers in a low-cost city with great social values.
Facebook became the latest Silicon Valley giant to set up shop in the city with a Sept. 15 announcement that it would open a research lab and invest $7 million in Montreal’s AI community, joining Google, Microsoft and Samsung, which all have a presence in the city.
More deals are likely on the way, according to Yoshua Bengio, considered one of the pioneers of deep learning — an AI subset that uses neural networks to mimic the way a human brain learns and adapts.