Google Brain Toronto
canada.googleblog.com
canada.googleblog.com
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 very early stage of an ordinary research partnership between a public university and a corporation, but I can find none of these details about Vector.
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
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?
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.
Added bonus of making Trump look bad by doing cool stuff in USA's backyard instead of the valley.
Tangentially, do you think any of this will trickle down to people who are trying to learn math/ML in the form of scholarships?
Edit: to those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Am I wrong in some way?
One of the main reasons for lack of research in India is lack of funding. Its nothing compared to US universities. But that does not imply it lacks talent. In fact primality test in polynomial time was founded by computer scientists at IIT - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test.
Waterloo is best at producing the best engineers at the undergrad level.
Conveniently, you chopped the word "more" off of "more equal society". Kind of unfair to argue against a point the person didn't make.
And there's more to Canada than Toronto. Montreal has great rent prices and a fun-loving tech scene, and a very unique culture. Quebec has $5 a day daycare, free healthcare for all, and McGill university which is ranked as one of the best research institutions in the world despite having the cheapest tuition in North America (although prices for non-residents are quite a bit higher).
If an engineer stays in Canada it's certainly not because they're being adequately compensated.
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 than there is at Waterloo.
Funny aside: I saw him walking up University Ave a few weeks ago. He was all bundled up in a coat and hood. It was cold out, but I also suspect he is becoming recognizable as a celebrity by some and prefers to keep a low profile. If I had recognized him earlier I probably would have tried to stop and chat.
This selection will certainly put a dent in Waterloo's reputation, though with any luck they'll be able to capitalize on it in some capacity due to their proximity.
And if it really matters to you that Waterloo be involved, it's obviously worth pointing out that Pearl Sullivan (Dean of Waterloo Engineering) is on the Board of Directors for the Vector Institute anyway.
Highly doubt it. Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research. People go to Waterloo to get into industry and not academics.
Are you out of your mind?
Do you know why Waterloo's School of Computer Science is named after David R. Cheriton?
Yeah, the same DRC who made a major exit to Cisco, seed funded Google and hold an emeritus professorship at Stanford.
A sizeable chunk of the people who published Spark have done their undergrad' or research masters at UW.
Waterloo is definitely top-notch at the undergrad', perhaps less impressive than schools with bigger endowment at the research level, but far from being "trash". Tons of Waterloo profs are on the steering committees of major CS conferences (VLDB most notably).
This comment is so puerile, it has to be written by some jealous and petty undergraduate student. Or so I hope.
Relatedly, Waterloo is in fact included in the Budget 2017 funding for Canada's overall AI initiative, of which this Vector stuff is a part:
"In this budget, the government announced the creation of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which will promote collaboration between AI hubs Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, and Edmonton. It will be dedicating $125 million towards the launch of this strategy."
Take your pick :)
Yes, you can buy a house there more cheaply than in Toronto. But is owning a pile of bricks worth living in a wasteland? Personal preference, as they say.
Why? UofT / Hinton are doing the AI here...
Looking beyond the presentation though, I find this an interesting and important development for the field. I'm inclined to think there are plenty of valuable researchers who will work for the vector institute in Toronto who would not have gone to work for Google Brain in the SF Bay area.
So many bets being placed on gift horses hoping for a high return. So little efforts looking and/or thinking beyond a narrow box.
So much disruption potential outside of mainstream currents.
And to think.. All one needs is a computer and an idea.
What unfolds in the times ahead is going to be one for the history books.
History books contain a lot of inane details no one besides readers of history books are ever charged with knowing. (Then there's the important big-picture stuff and sub-arcs that we're supposed to remember lest we repeat them, but most people have already stopped caring by that point because of the inane details)