Conference & Meetings World Supplements Canada AI Supplement | Page 8

Canada
Edmonton
Oiling the wheels of AI
AI expertise is being reinforced in Alberta
G
oogle’s DeepMind
company is one of
the global names
blazing a trail in Edmonton,
where the company is
collaborating with the University
of Alberta on Reinforcement
Learning. Research here
focuses on ‘rewarding’ or
‘punishing’ the machine,
based on its work, so it is
trained to understand 'right'
from 'wrong'.
Google’s DeepMind AI
department has been
embedded within the
University’s computing science
department since July 2017.
The project’s founder and
DeepMind CEO, Emis Hassabis,
is leading on the major funding
of research from Google
through an endowed chair
and additional funding. It is
important to know there are
boundaries; DeepMind allows
the Computing Science
Department academic
freedom to explore the fi eld.
This and other corporate
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CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
funding, as well as great belief
in the city’s AI academics,
is attracting more talented
researchers to the city.
Professor Richard Sutton
heads the collaboration with
DeepMind on the academic
side, along with colleagues
professor Michael Bowling
and professor Patrick Pilarski,
and the university boasts the
second most academic
publications in the world on the
subject of AI.
Jonathan Schaeffer, an AI
researcher and dean of the
University’s Faculty of Science,
believes research in this area
will help shape the future in a
variety of ways.
“Companies, governments
and citizens continue
to produce data on an
unprecedented scale,” says
Schaeffer. “Artifi cial Intelligence
provides opportunities to help
society make sense of this
deluge of data by turning data
into knowledge to aid decision-
making processes.”
Intelligent artifi cial limbs
In the AI realm, Edmonton
is fast becoming one of the
major innovation hubs, not only
in Canada but globally, too.
Arguably Edmonton’s best-
known celebrity is probably
ice hockey legend Wayne
Gretzky, but new superstars are
emerging in the AI medical
fi eld in particular. There is
certainly a multitude of AI stars
putting the ‘art’ in ‘artifi cial’.
Snap-on ears and noses
and scalpel-free surgeries
are all innovative techniques
developed, as well