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Google Brain Toronto

canada.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Brain Toronto

#31

Post by eigenvector »

karpathy wrote: post #12
AdamSC1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? This is an odd choice. Google just built their massive new campus in Waterloo, and University of Waterloo is one of the best engineer schools and computer science schools in the world, but they build this an hour away in a market that is much more expensive? An odd choice for sure.

I wasn't too surprised. If you look at the Vector Institute website ( http://vectorinstitute.ai/#people ), you'll see many additional well-known researchers involved, in addition to Geoff Hinton: David Duvenaud, Sanja Fidler, Brendan Frey, Roger Grosse, Geoffrey Hinton, Jordan Jacobs, Tomi Poutanen, Daniel Roy, Raquel Urtasun, Richard Zemel. there is a lot more momentum at UofT in this specific area of research, more…

Funnily enough, I was searching for an official Vector website (which isn't linked from either the Google or U of T announcements), tried Googling it and didn't find anything. So thanks for the link.

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#32

Post by canistr »

eigenvector wrote: post #24

1. What is the Vector Institute? Is a foundation? Is it a not-for-profit corporation? Something else? 2. Who controls it? The government (which has put in most of the announced funding)? The University of Toronto? Google? A combination of all of those? 3. Who will own the work created by the Institute? How will it be licensed, and what rules will govern its publication? These are questions that would be answered at a…

#3 bothers me a lot. It reminds me of the way owners of sports franchises use public tax-payer money to pay for stadiums, meanwhile keeping all the profits from the money made by their teams.

If the various governments in Canada are funding this research and Google is contributing such a minor amount of funding, who is the beneficiary of the research output? Does Google get first dibs on all the information? Does the research ultimately find its most valuable commercial use at Google? Who else stands to benefit from this research? Are any of these beneficiaries going to directly be Canadians? Or are Canadians merely going to be tertiary benefactors with the primary ones being the researchers working in Toronto taking salaries?

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#33

Post by eigenvector »

eigenvector wrote: post #24

1. What is the Vector Institute? Is a foundation? Is it a not-for-profit corporation? Something else? 2. Who controls it? The government (which has put in most of the announced funding)? The University of Toronto? Google? A combination of all of those? 3. Who will own the work created by the Institute? How will it be licensed, and what rules will govern its publication? These are questions that would be answered at a…

In another comment someone posted the link to Vector's website (which I couldn't find linked from any of the announcements, nor by searching on Google), which clarifies #1 and #2.

http://vectorinstitute.ai/

Vector is organized as a not-for-profit corporation. It has 12 directors including some academics, some big names from corporate Canada, two VCs, a few entrepreneurs, and a few people with close ties to the Ontario government.

The directors are:

Ed Clark - former bank CEO, Ontario government economic advisor

Scott Bonham - VC

Vivek Goel - senior administrator at U of T

Mary Jo Haddad - management consultant specializing in healthcare

Chaviva Hosek - U of T public policy professor, former Canadian government advisor

Jordan Jacobs - lawyer and founder of an AI company

Stephen Lake - engineer and founder

Nadir Mohamed - former Big 3 telecom CEO, associated with Ryerson University

Michael Serbinis - scientist and founder

Pearl Sullivan - Dean of Engineering at UWaterloo

Terrence Sullivan - healthcare policy professor at U of T, closely tied to the Ontario government

Shivon Zilis - VC

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#34

Post by [deleted] »

dukeluke wrote: post #30
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just speculating, but positions in AI are usually filled by people with PhD's and this knowledge is so scarce in the job market, not low level IT pros who are competing in a race to the bottom

What keeps other countries like India from developing PhD's like that? It seems like they would have a strong incentive to do so.

[deleted]

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#35

Post by johncolanduoni »

dukeluke wrote: post #30
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just speculating, but positions in AI are usually filled by people with PhD's and this knowledge is so scarce in the job market, not low level IT pros who are competing in a race to the bottom

What keeps other countries like India from developing PhD's like that? It seems like they would have a strong incentive to do so.

Well in a sense they already do, but mostly at US universities.

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#36

Post by JabavuAdams »

AdamSC1 wrote: post #5
astrodust wrote: post #2

Ouch, sorry Waterloo.

Right? This is an odd choice. Google just built their massive new campus in Waterloo, and University of Waterloo is one of the best engineer schools and computer science schools in the world, but they build this an hour away in a market that is much more expensive? An odd choice for sure.

Few people want to live in Waterloo when they could live in Toronto instead.

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#38

Post by username223 »

karpathy wrote: post #12
AdamSC1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? This is an odd choice. Google just built their massive new campus in Waterloo, and University of Waterloo is one of the best engineer schools and computer science schools in the world, but they build this an hour away in a market that is much more expensive? An odd choice for sure.

I wasn't too surprised. If you look at the Vector Institute website ( http://vectorinstitute.ai/#people ), you'll see many additional well-known researchers involved, in addition to Geoff Hinton: David Duvenaud, Sanja Fidler, Brendan Frey, Roger Grosse, Geoffrey Hinton, Jordan Jacobs, Tomi Poutanen, Daniel Roy, Raquel Urtasun, Richard Zemel. there is a lot more momentum at UofT in this specific area of research, more…

Hinton? Wow. After decades of going on about neural nets while most machine learning folks pursued other things, he's sure milking his 15 minutes of fame for all they're worth!

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#39

Post by devdoomari »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #22
dukeluke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those jobs would have been shipped to India eventually anyway. Global corporations don't care about silly things like stable economies. They care about the bottom line. Edit: to those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Am I wrong in some way?

India doesn't have top universities and top research talent.

aren't IITs top univ.s?

Re: Google Brain Toronto

#40

Post by tjpoutanen »

canistr wrote: post #32
eigenvector wrote: post #24

1. What is the Vector Institute? Is a foundation? Is it a not-for-profit corporation? Something else? 2. Who controls it? The government (which has put in most of the announced funding)? The University of Toronto? Google? A combination of all of those? 3. Who will own the work created by the Institute? How will it be licensed, and what rules will govern its publication? These are questions that would be answered at a…

#3 bothers me a lot. It reminds me of the way owners of sports franchises use public tax-payer money to pay for stadiums, meanwhile keeping all the profits from the money made by their teams. If the various governments in Canada are funding this research and Google is contributing such a minor amount of funding, who is the beneficiary of the research output? Does Google get first dibs on all the information? Does the…

Google is one of 11 companies (the platinum level sponsors) that committed $5M to Vector. It's not a Google thing.

The researchers are Vector are free to pursue their own interests, and publish their work like any other academic. Their output is not owned by Google or any of the corporate sponsors.

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