AI startup community Alberta bound
‘ There’s a lot of excitement around this’
The AI community in Edmonton may have got off to a quiet start, but it is now viewed as a world leader in the field. This status is driving efforts to build a startup ecosystem worthy of attracting VCs and corporations hungry for AI solutions.
The community’s notoriety can be attributed in large part to the work of Richard Sutton, a computing science professor at the University of Alberta who heads up the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence research program (RLAI). Sutton is considered the pre-eminent researcher in reinforcement learning — a subset of AI he describes as learning by trial and error.
“Deep (or machine) learning is more supervised, in which you are given a training set with many examples of how systems should behave. Reinforcement learning systems interact and figure out for themselves the best things they need to do to achieve their goals.”
Reinforcement learning is being used in ad and article placement on websites and schedule and resource management. It’s often used in tandem with machine learning techniques (autonomous vehicles being a case in point).
Sutton’s latest mission is to work with various groups to develop a stronger economy for potential AI companies. It’s a timely goal, given that the demand for AI is estimated to reach $45 trillion by 2025, he says. “We now have major companies coming into Edmonton; and there’s a lot of excitement around this activity in the startup community.”
Sutton is also head advisor for the university’s Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII), established 15 years ago to promote research in AI and machine learning.
There is a commercial piece that goes with that research now, says executive director Cameron Schuler.
“There needs to be a demand- driven component to this. Professors come up with things that can apply to industry. We find industry problems we can create startups around.”
Last fall, AMII announced its first official startup: PFM Scheduling Services, an AI solution f or automating schedule-building processes in healthcare. Plans are to launch three to four additional startups over the next 12 to 18 months, or possibly more, Schuler says.
Another step f orward has been the recent RBC announcement establishing an AI research lab in Edmonton.
Gabriel Woo, VP of innovation at RBC Research in Toronto, says while Toronto and Montreal’s AI ecosystem is further along, “you have a comparable academic lab at AMII, and it is home to Sutton, who literally wrote the textbook on reinforcement learning that is being read around the world. Because of that, we are partnering with them to create and fuel opportunities to help that talent stay in Edmonton.”
Woo believes the community can expect to see more investors and startups in the near future. “Capital needs to find its way there. If we are able to provide opportunities for them to apply their research, it will attract more attention from VCs and others and increase the opportunities for commercialization.”
Cam Linke, co- founder of Startup Edmonton, says the city is starting to see more startups take advantage of this new- found interest in AI. “When we started, you couldn’t get attention unless you were talking about pulling fermented dinosaurs out of the ground. Now it’s great to see attention is on more sectors than oil.”
Startups are working with AI in two ways, he explains. “They either have it as a core part of what they are doing; or they are amplifying what is being done already using machine learning to target the right people and product offerings.”
Edmonton is a perfect venue for this, Linke says. “We have a large number of industries — oil and gas, finance, healthcare — with big problems to solve and the data and ability to use it. A lot of startups are being created because they can now combine AI techniques with these industry ties to create a company. Within that mix are the researchers at the university.”
The only problem, Linke says, is that Edmonton has been too quiet about what it has been doing. “Whether by accident or not, we have ended up with a fantastic group of AI researchers. Now we’re dealing with a good core of startups and connecting great talent to great companies, and multi-national companies are noticing what we are doing.”
One particular point of pride for Sutton is that they are now managing to keep talent at home. “AI is a global world and Canada is a world leader. Canada is punching above its weight and we’re trying to keep it that way. To do that we have to ensure there are business opportunities here.”
As Schuler notes: “If you want to drill for oil and gas, you would do it in Alberta, not Washington State. The argument is the same for AI. We have one of the best groups in the world so how do we capitalize on this? By building industries, attracting companies and reinvesting.
It should be natural for people to want to come here because of the asset we have.”
CANADA IS PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT.