LindbergMTL

Techstars Amplifies Montreal’s Burgeoning AI Ecosystem March 12, 2018 in Accelerators, AnnouncementsPosted by David Brown BOULDER, Colo., – March 12, 2018 – Montreal is the capital of Artificial Intelligence in Canada, boasting one of the largest AI academic communities in the world. It’s no wonder why Techstars is opening its third Canadian mentorship-driven accelerator in Montreal: Techstars Montreal AI Accelerator. Techstars is grateful for the support from Real Ventures, Canada’s most active early-stage venture fund, for their assistance in bringing this accelerator to Montreal. Element AI, a Real Ventures portfolio company, is a key player in the AI scene in Montreal and abroad (Toronto, London, Singapore). “As a Montreal native, I’m thrilled to bring Techstars to my hometown,” said David Brown, founder and co-CEO of Techstars. “Techstars is the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed and, with the support of Real Ventures, entrepreneurs in our program will have access to AI pioneers to help guide and mentor them. Montreal has all the ingredients that we look for as we expand our mentorship-driven accelerator programs – strong community of innovation, access to capital and the support from major corporations.” Participating startups will benefit from the most concentrated pool of AI researchers worldwide with guidance from people like Yoshua Bengio, one of the founding fathers of AI, who is based at the University of Montreal. In addition, leading corporations like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung, Thales, and others have invested millions of dollars in AI labs across Montreal. “Building on our long-standing relationship with Techstars and the positive experience Real Ventures has had in Toronto with the first Techstars Accelerator in Canada, we felt it was vital to bring an AI-focused accelerator program with global reach to Montreal,” said Real Ventures partner, John Stokes. “With Techstars’ reputation and international network, it will be possible to attract extremely high-caliber and globally-minded startups to the ecosystem and create a positive feedback loop that will lead to greater success all round.” Applications for the program open today and the deadline to apply is May 13, 2018. The program kicks off in September 2018 and will conclude with Demo Day in December during NIPS 2018 in Montreal. Investing in Artificial Intelligence Techstars Montreal AI Accelerator will select startups that advance the development and application of artificial intelligence across all industries and markets. AI technologies and business applications continue to evolve. Startups focused on the following themes are encouraged to apply. Deep Learning, machine learning, reinforcement learning The advancement of image recognition and other domain/industry specific applications Speech recognition, linguistics and natural language processing IoT / sensor systems and autonomous vehicles / drones Predictive analytics and recommendation systems (domain/industry specific applications) Diverse application of AI in control systems, agent enablers and cognitive computing “Augmenting” human experts across industries including supply chain, advanced manufacturing and robotics; smart mobility, transportation and smart city; cybersecurity, automated vulnerability assessment and intelligent remediation; health and medical advancement, from personalized medicine to genomics data processing; financial modeling, fraud prediction and detection; media creation, production, distribution and monetization Interested in Becoming a Corporate Partner? Techstars is looking for corporate partners to join the burgeoning ecosystem in Montreal. Corporations interested in partnering with Techstars to double down on AI in Montreal should email morgan.berman@techstars.com. For entrepreneurs interested in applying to Techstars Montreal AI Accelerator, please check out the Application Toolkit. https://www.techstars.com/content/accelerators/techstars-amplifies-montreals-burgeoning-ai-ecosystem/

Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs No matter what anyone tells you, we’re not ready for the massive societal upheavals on the way. by Kai-Fu Lee February 21, 2018 I took an Uber to an artificial-­intelligence conference at MIT one recent morning, and the driver asked me how long it would take for autonomous vehicles to take away his job. I told him it would happen in about 15 to 20 years. He breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I’ll be retired by then,” he said. Good thing we weren’t in China. If a driver there had asked, I would have had to tell him he’d lose his job in about 10 years—maybe 15 if he was lucky. L’article au complet: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610298/tech-companies-should-stop-pretending-ai-wont-destroy-jobs/

Pour ceux qui craignent pour la planète, d'ici 10 à 20 ans, il n'y aura plus de trafic ni de bouchons comme on les connait aujourd'hui. Je sais que ça peut sembler incroyable pour certains, mais les véhicules (qui seront tous électriques) seront pour la plupart des transporteurs autonomes de personnes (multiples usagers avec multiples destinations), ils seront tous connectés les uns aux autres virtuellement, facilitant grandement les flots de circulation et éliminant les accidents complètement. Donc plus de pollution aux gaz, et plus de bouchons de circulation. L' accélération des développements en IA est exponentielle, pas linéaire. Les changements vont aller très vite. L'autre argument incontournable c'est qu'il faut développer le coeur de l'île de Montréal, pour contrecarrer l'étalement urbain vers les banlieues. Ce projet est une bonne occasion de le faire. Une autre belle annonce pour Montréal!

Je suis d’accord avec toi. Seulement, ces deux grandes façades noires brutales et lourdes me font craindre le pire.

Pauvre Montréal, un Smith géant!

Par la bouteille de lait?

Il inspire ses voisins à construire des édifice à bureaux, en gros!

C'est difficile de comprendre comment une horreur pareille a pu se faire construire. Un exemple de Affordable Housing dans le Bronx:

Mon Dieu, un Louis Bohème sur les stéroïdes!

Armed with $102 Million in funding, Element AI Marches Onwards Element AI has very quickly established itself as a leader in the AI space — in your own words how would you describe what Element AI is, as well as yours and your team’s mission(s)? We offer an array of products and services that help large enterprises to transform their business to run on AI. Our platform focused on Enterprise AI, meaning that it uniquely deals with complex problems, relatively small amounts of data to train from, and very high-performance thresholds required by global organizations. We help our customers go from ideation, road mapping, implementation and continuous improvement/maintenance. We are the only company that possesses deep expertise and capabilities in the full AI spectrum, deep learning (Vision, NLP, etc.), Deep Reinforcement Learning, Operations Research, and many more… I’m always interested in learning about how folks define AI, if I walked up to you at an event and asked you, how do you define AI? What is your answer? I would describe it as any piece of software that takes care of a task by itself where the software has “evolved” the way to solve/execute by learning from experiences (data), and therefore can continue over time (exposure) to improve itself by executing the task. Lire le reste du blog: https://rossintelligence.com/element-ai/

"startup activity has not yet resulted in any major IPOs, and Montreal still doesn’t have any “unicorns” — startup companies valued at more than $1 billion." C'est ce que je disais l'autre jour. On espère voir un, deux ou même 3 unicorns en AI `a Montréal dans les 5 prochaines années. Voici une liste de recents unicorns. On est encore très loin de Silicon Valley: https://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/

Bon, faut se calmer le pompon un peu. Je serais d'accord avec ça quand les profs de Stanford et MIT déménageront à Montréal. Et Toronto est aussi reconnue que Montréal en AI. Mais Montréal est sur une lancée et la ville va se transformer très vite autour de AI à mon avis.

Wow, Carnegie Mellon est très fort en AI et mathématiques. Ils viennent de perdre un gros morceau en M. Gordon. Ca va attirer plus de grosses pointures à Montreal sûrement.

Certains de vous connaissez l’anciene Tour ATT à Manhattan. 37 étages à 197 mètres ! 550 Madison Avenue (formerly known as the Sony Tower or Sony Plaza and before that the AT&T Building), is an iconic postmodern647-foot-tall (197-meter), 37-story highrise skyscraper located at 550 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.[3] Designed by Philip Johnson, it was formerly the headquarters of Sony Corporation of America.[4] The tower was purchased by the Olayan Group and Chelsfield for $1.4 billion in 2016.[2]

Ce qui est encourageant dans cette nouvelle, c'est le désir d'ériger une tour qui aura du panache. Elle ne sera pas la plus haute de la ville, mais au moins elle pourra se faire remarquer par son originalité. Enfin, c'est ce que j'espère. Et puis, j'ai aussi espoir que la tour à condos sera aussi spectaculaire. Une autre tour trophée pour monsieur Broccolini. Et on le remerciera de montrer aux autres développeurs le meilleur chemin à prendre: qualité architecturale = meilleurs retours sur l'investissements.

Une tour trophée de 300 mètres serait parfait!

Une tour Trophée pour Broccolini à Montréal? Toutes les tours et gratte-ciels sont des trophées. Pour le développeur et pour les locataires. Mais qui peut se payer un tel trophée dans l'économie actuelle? La Tech bubble a créer de nombreuses entreprises avec d'incroyables capitalisations. Des startups qui du jour au lendemain voient leur capitalisations dépasser les GE et GM de ce monde, malgré le fait qu'elles ne font pas un sou de profit depuis leur naissance. Comment opèrent-elles? Elles engagent des centaines voire des milliers de jeunes diplomés sans expérience, les entasse dans d'immenses espaces ouverts, leur offre des tables de pingpong, des bonbons et de la biere gratuite et a profusion. On les brule souvent, au bout de 6 mois ils quittent. Le IPO ramasse des tonnes et des tonnes de cash pour les investisseurs et les détenteurs d'actions. Arrivé la, l'entreprise veut se doter d'un trophée pour projeter une image de solidité et de domination. Je pense à Salesforce qui vient de louer plusieurs étages d'une tour trophée a San Francisco. Montréal n'a pas vraiment profité de la Tech Bubble qui a lieu a NY et San Francisco depuis quelques années. Mais Montréal semble avoir entré de plein pieds dans la AI Bubble. Celle la risque de canaliser des sommes encore plus colossales. Comme je l'ai dit ici a quelques reprises, Montréal sera méconnaissable dans dix ans, si des entreprises locales réussissent a devenir des Salesforce, UBER, Facebook ou Snapchat du AI. Cette nouvelle en est pour moi le premier signe concret. $100 millions, c'est considérable. Je pense que Montreal aura 1, 2, ou 3 grosses entreprises similaires dans le AI dans quelques années. Ca va aller tres vite. Bonne chance Broccolini!

Pour un investisseur en immobilier de l'exterieur du Quebec, c'est a Montreal qu'il faut investir, parce que la region va connaitre une croissance exponentielle (acceleration dans le temps), grace a son leadership dans les industries creatives comme AI, Video Games, Aerospatialle et Santé (desole pour le manque d'accents).

J'ai pu les voir sur la webcam du pont, mais oui, je ne comprends pas pourquoi on ne pouvait pas les voir en ligne, de facon correcte.

Montreal seeks to be world leader in responsible artificial intelligence research http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-ai-labs-world-leader-2017-1.4453302

Au risque de me répéter, faites connaitre votre opinion dans les médias sociaux en nommant Canvar et Le Smith. Vous pouvez bougonner autant que vous le voulez ici, ça n'a que très peu d'impact.

Aberrant!

Montréal est de loin la plus grande source de main-d'oeuvre immigrante de Toronto. Regardez la 2ieme carte de l'article. Mais le nombre de canadiens anglais que je retrouve ici à New York est impressionnant. Dans le monde des affaires et le monde académique, je suis toujours en contacte avec des canadiens, surtout de Toronto et Vancouver.

BOREALIS AI OPENING MONTREAL LAB WITH JACKIE CHEUNG AS ACADEMIC ADVISOR https://betakit.com/borealis-ai-opening-montreal-lab-with-jackie-cheung-as-academic-advisor/

Why Montreal has the Advantage over Toronto for Amazon HQ2Why Montreal has the Advantage over Toronto for Amazon HQ2 The trials and tribulations of Amazon’s HQ2 search continue as hiring startup Textio has shared some information that may serve to place Montreal above some other Canadian destinations. After pouring over 250 million job posts and hiring outcomes, Textio found that on average, Montreal was the quickest city in Canada to fill all vacant engineering roles, taking an average of just 20.2 days. In comparison, Toronto takes 41 days on average. One of the larger requirements in Amazon’s HQ2 RFP is that new talent must be easily found and hired. The two cities ahead of Montreal are Birmingham, Alabama and Grand Rapids, Michigan, taking an average of 15.5 and 17.7 days respectively to fill open engineering jobs. However, both of these cities are well below the population Amazon is looking for, while also lacking widespread infrastructure or massive governmental incentives. In fact, if the new 50,000-person Amazon HQ2 landed in Grand Rapids, it would grow the population by 25 per cent. There have been plenty of expert opinions levied regarding where Amazon will land. Geekwire chose Toronto as their lead, while CNN selected Atlanta and Venturebeat prefers Austin as their choice. Multiple reports have put Denver and Calgary at the top of the list. Denver takes an average of 32 days to fill engineering roles, while Calgary was not listed. These figures are merely kindling for the fire that Amazon is stoking in their boardrooms at the current Seattle headquarters, as no frontrunners have been named yet. Many seem keen on a Canadian destination, as Amazon specified anywhere in “North America” and not just the U.S. Amazon is, of course, looking for more than engineer hiring speed, but this stat shows how much the e-commerce giant has to consider when scouting for a new location. Over 100 cities are vying for the new destination that will see massive amounts of revenue brought to the winning location. But it might not be all good, as just like a bid for the Olympics, Amazon coming to town is intrinsically good but comes burdened with a few minor side effects. Applications for the HQ2 are due by October 19, and we may see a rumbling of rumours surface right after then. https://techvibes.com/2017/09/26/why-montreal-has-the-advantage-over-toronto-for-amazon-hq2