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Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

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Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#31

Post by hellofunk »

edblarney wrote: post #26
mablap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one data point: There are about 150 academic AI researchers in in an area of 1.4 square kilometre radius in downtown Montreal.

Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown. So, in a way, it has a 'geography' advantage to such numbers :). That said, I'm highly doubtful that they will be able to effectively leverage the knowledge. Bombardier etc. are slow, monolithic entities, who will no doubt take AI up, but I wonder how effectively and profitably for local entities. Air Canada is…

> Francophone networks are weak. They are very local, and poor, and for a variety of reasons a little 'self oriented'. This is a Quebec thing, but also a French thing

> An acquaintance calls herself a 'playwright' and she's written 2 tiny productions for the local theatre with 2 actors each - no props or anything. She's late in her 'career' already.

You are making such blanket statements of stereotypes.

The "career" of an artist, as you mention, is not something for you to judge the quality or success of. I suppose that because the great writer Bukowski was still working as an unknown postal worker at age 50 that he was also too late in his career. Or the many other artists with similar "careers". It's not you to judge someone else's artistic output, or for that matter, the quality of a network of people based on the language they speak.

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#32

Post by cknd »

tormeh wrote: post #29
cknd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By pure chance I know one exception to this ad-tech/e-commerce bias in Berlin: I'm at a Berlin-based company[0] working on DL and deep RL for industrial applications (think robots, optimisation and control). [0] micropsi-industries.com/join_us

That's way cool. I'm a cybernetics graduate, and I've long thought that the current ways of regulating processes could probably be improved upon with ML. Tough to get any one to pay attention because PID is usually good enough, and the field generally value mathematical analyzability, which ANNs are not particularly known for. Is there any way I can contact you directly?

yes, let's talk: clemens@

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#33

Post by builtinbuffalo »

This isnt as far fetched as one may think.

There's a lot of talent in Montreal and great technology has been developed there.

There's a lot more entrepreneurs than many assume from their daily interactions.

Example:

The worlds first visual word processor was developed in Montreal by Stephen Dorsey - well before Gates, Jobs and Woz.

He then went on to develop real time fax over IP in the late 80s / early 90s and owns the patent on t38.

Steve and his company are still active, developing communications tech that's used worldwide.

This is just one example of many I've unexpectedly encountered doing business in the area.

Never say never :)

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#34

Post by JabavuAdams »

mablap wrote: post #13
raverbashing wrote: post #9

"Leading" Self-delusions of grandeur of Quebeckers are funny. Too bad they can't attract talent and can't use the ones they attracted there Meanwhile some top experts are in Silicon Valley, some others in London, there's a lot of ML investment in Berlin and other cities Montreal is a great city but gets dragged down by the French Quebec BS

Can someone flag this comment? I don't have the option. I had written a proper response but the level of ignorance and apparent hatred displayed in your comment makes me doubt you would have read it.

While these may not be pleasant attitudes, the effects are real.

There's a pretty big disincentive for anglophone engineers to move to Montreal, say from Toronto. Not sure about Waterloo. Waterloo's kind of dead, so I imagine graduates being glad to move anywhere more interesting.

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#35

Post by edblarney »

hellofunk wrote: post #31
edblarney wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown. So, in a way, it has a 'geography' advantage to such numbers :). That said, I'm highly doubtful that they will be able to effectively leverage the knowledge. Bombardier etc. are slow, monolithic entities, who will no doubt take AI up, but I wonder how effectively and profitably for local entities. Air Canada is…

> Francophone networks are weak. They are very local, and poor, and for a variety of reasons a little 'self oriented'. This is a Quebec thing, but also a French thing > An acquaintance calls herself a 'playwright' and she's written 2 tiny productions for the local theatre with 2 actors each - no props or anything. She's late in her 'career' already. You are making such blanket statements of stereotypes. The "career"…

" Francophone networks are weak. They are very local, and poor"

A) French speaking Quebecers are poor, relative to N. America. Median wages are 'ok' due to lots of 'decent' government jobs, but mean wages for Francophones are very low.

B) Francophone business networks usually don't expand beyond Quebec. There are no elite Universities in Quebec (McGill is pretty good, but not French), and there is zero access to networks from elite schools among Francophones.

C) There are very few wealthy Francophone Quebecers who 'write cheques' for startups.

Ergo - networks are very weak here, it's just a fact.

I've lived in several cities in N.America/Europe, this is by far the weakest of 'known cities'. It's probably better than Orlando. Or Dublin. But worse than any of Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, Frankfurt, etc..

"The "career" of an artist, as you mention, is not something for you to judge the quality or success of. "

I'll judge these people however I want, but it's not a judgement to point out that people who prefer to serve coffee and write 1 short play every 10 years aren't the kinds of people who build high-tech startups. I know these people very well (I live in ground-zero of French Montreal), they prefer to do other things, that's fine, it's not a judgement, just a reality. (FYI Bukowski was prolific - he wrote tons of stuff).

A 'circus' - yes. I can't think of any other place in North America where 'Cirque du Soleil' could be born. And it seems there's a huge plethora of 'artisanal' small-scale things ...

I like Montreal, which is why I live here, and I have no doubt there will be some startups here and there that will win, but it will never be the 'leader' in any classical, industrious lines of business. There will likely never be a full-blown ecosystem here for any industry that doesn't already exist.

The people here do not have any interest in building it.

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#36

Post by bogomipz »

edblarney wrote: post #26
mablap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one data point: There are about 150 academic AI researchers in in an area of 1.4 square kilometre radius in downtown Montreal.

Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown. So, in a way, it has a 'geography' advantage to such numbers :). That said, I'm highly doubtful that they will be able to effectively leverage the knowledge. Bombardier etc. are slow, monolithic entities, who will no doubt take AI up, but I wonder how effectively and profitably for local entities. Air Canada is…

>"Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown."

This statement is not true, its not even close:

Montreal with a population of 1.65 million and 248K students would mean around 15% of the population are students.

Larger students per capita in North America would include:

Ames, Iowa 34.2 percent.

Ithaca, New York 32.8 percent.

State College, Pennsylvania 31.8 percent

Lawrence, Kansas 31.1 percent,

College Station-Bryan, Texas 30.6 percent.

For just raw student population numbers in North America:

Chicago has a student population of 670K.

Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami have 380k students each.

San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, and Detroit each have 300K students.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Montreal

http://www.citylab.com/design/2012/08/americas-leading-colle...

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#37

Post by [deleted] »

raverbashing wrote: post #9

"Leading" Self-delusions of grandeur of Quebeckers are funny. Too bad they can't attract talent and can't use the ones they attracted there Meanwhile some top experts are in Silicon Valley, some others in London, there's a lot of ML investment in Berlin and other cities Montreal is a great city but gets dragged down by the French Quebec BS

[deleted]

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#38

Post by Vinsalg »

bogomipz wrote: post #36
edblarney wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown. So, in a way, it has a 'geography' advantage to such numbers :). That said, I'm highly doubtful that they will be able to effectively leverage the knowledge. Bombardier etc. are slow, monolithic entities, who will no doubt take AI up, but I wonder how effectively and profitably for local entities. Air Canada is…

>"Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a clustering of big Unis downtown." This statement is not true, its not even close: Montreal with a population of 1.65 million and 248K students would mean around 15% of the population are students. Larger students per capita in North America would include: Ames, Iowa 34.2 percent. Ithaca, New York 32.8 percent. State College, Pennsylvania 31.…

I think he's referring to the fact that the Uni campuses are situated directly downtown. Something rare in other American cities.

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#39

Post by kelvin0 »

I think there are a lot of Intelligent, Educated, Talented and Creative people in Montreal. But that probably can be said of many places across the globe. So the raw materials for successful tech hub are (partially) available.

However, the government seems to to the major 'driving' force behind this, just like they are doing with the Video Game industry in the Province, with big subsidies, tax breaks which 'artificially' boosts local studios.

Now the future will tell if the artificial injection will create a lasting, self-sustaining tech hub, or will simply evaporate in the next elections (if a different government decides to cut the Business friendly regulations). But if we take the historic example of the local video game studios (there are a TON of studios around town!), there is a big potential for Montreal to become an important AI center.

Ex-Gamedev (and Montrealer) ...

Re: Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover

#40

Post by rocky1138 »

mablap wrote: post #17
ryanobjc wrote: post #10

Air Canada isn't a global company. It's a flag carrier for Canada only. The rest is wishful thinking. Building an industry isn't just top down (all the braggy stuff was about top down), the bottom up stuff is critical and important. Good luck with it. But I feel like while the research might be OK, the commercialization will come out of the bay area anyways. There just isn't enough quality people to do this in Canada…

What do you mean by "bottom up" in this context? They mention having a lot of researchers (grunts) and now a brand new startup accelerator. > There just isn't enough quality people to do this in Canada. Do you really believe that would be the cause?

I believe he/she means that, while it's important to have quality infrastructure in place (fun locations, decent food, good pipes) to support startups and tech, it's absolutely critical to have a small group of hackers which actually DO things. Otherwise it's just theatre.

The jury is still out on whether one comes before the other or vise versa.

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