A 600-mile commute?

Boston, Montreal angling to connect with Pittsburgh’s tech smarts

Steelers fans wouldn’t want to be caught cozying up with the home of the New England Patriots, just as Penguins fans wouldn’t fraternize with the Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens. But tech stakeholders are proposing Pittsburgh does just that.

Industry leaders are working to connect the artificially intelligent dots between Pittsburgh, Boston and Montreal — all midsized research driven cities.

Tentatively called the “AI Triangle,” the partnership would coordinate talent and resources to help entrepreneurs, investors and students connect with more customers and more capital (in other words, money).

With about 600 miles between the Steel City and either of its proposed tech partners, this may seem like a strange collaboration. But those pushing for the Triangle say the distance won’t cause a problem (thanks, in part, to direct flights from airlines like JetBlue).

“It speeds access to the market, customers and investors,” said Brian Kennedy, senior vice president for operations and government affairs for the North Sidebased Pittsburgh Technology Council, which is one of the founding partners on Pittsburgh’s end of the collaboration.

“The idea of just having good ties to people who are at some of the leading corporations in Boston, Montreal and Pittsburgh creates an opportunity for some great introductions,” Mr. Kennedy said.

With innovators already studying at places like the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in one city and attending the World Summit AI Americas hosted in the other, both the Boston and Montreal regions have made a name for themselves as emerging tech centers.

The Brookings Institute included Boston as one of the top five innovation metro areas in the country — alongside San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and San Diego — in a December 2019 report.

CBRE Research, an arm of the Los Angeles-based CBRE Group, ranked Montreal 13th out of 50 top tech markets in a July 2019 report.

The triangulation has already begun. Cohorts from each city have started to pay visits to one another. So far, they say it’s working out.

“This is one of the things where you invest time, energy, resources. You don’t exactly know where it’s going to end up. But it’s productive and worth the effort so far,” Mr. Kennedy said.

After more than a year of discussions, the partnership is moving into the implementation stage, said Kenny Chen, executive director of the Partnership to Advance Responsible Technology, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit think tank helping lead the city’s efforts in this collaboration. Details aren’t finalized, but implementation could mean an artificial intelligence startup accelerator, a student fellowship for universities, or a set of guidelines that outline each city’s ethical practices and policies, Mr. Chen said. The group hopes to kick off pilot programs this fall.

“Those of us who really care about the technology, the ethics, the cross sector components of this, we’re going to band together and make sure that we’re doing it right,” Mr. Chen said.

The conversation started more than a year ago when representatives from Boston reached out to the

Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Boston and Montreal had already been talking about artificial intelligence and robotics partnership opportunities. They were looking for other cities in North America that could complement their efforts, Mr. Chen said. When in Pittsburgh, they “saw a lot of alignment and synergy” between the three cities.

Since then, Pittsburgh and Montreal have developed a friendly rivalry through their involvement in the IBM Watson AI XPrize, an international competition that offers a $5 million purse to companies using artificial intelligence to solve pressing problems.

Montreal had consistently been one step ahead of Pittsburgh in the number of companies each city had in the running, Mr. Chen said — until the most recent round.

Now, Pittsburgh is the only city with two companies left in the competition, which will wrap up next month.

“Boston and Montreal are interested in working with us in the same way XPrize has found us to be one of the more active hubs,” Mr. Chen said.

Proponents of the AI Triangle are collecting letters of support from industry stakeholders and ironing out details like what the group will officially be named and who will provide funding.

Mr. Chen said he did not have figures to report on how much a partnership of this sort would cost, but he added that he expected it could be “managed in a fairly lean way” by leveraging existing partnerships.

“We’re in the midst of figuring all of that out ... working with others as we go forward and figure out the governance and the scope of this partnership, see how it forms,” he said. “The sky’s the limit.”