Element AI is a Canadian start-up based in Montreal that aims to help organizations develop from AI research and deep learning. Yoshua Bengio, one of the pioneers in deep learning is the founder of this start-up incubator that will assist organizations progress towards an AI-First world for today and tomorrow. The company launches and incubates advanced AI based solutions using deep learning techniques, which is the most advanced form of Artificial intelligence. Element AI has the most advanced research lab which is tied-up with world’s best academic ecosystems. They help large corporations identify opportunities to make use of machine learning and AI in enhancing their business.
AI Ecosystem:
Bengio works as professor at University of Montréal where Element AI has its research lab and will help in building companies from AI research. It also has tie-up with nearby McGill University and Bengio aims in developing a small “AI ecosystem” in Montreal. Bengio feels that Montreal offers the best team of academic researchers who explore deep learning, which is the advanced form of AI that plays a major role in the businesses of top technology companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Google. There are more than 100 researchers who are exploring deep learning at University of Montreal and 50 more researchers are working in the same area at University of McGill. Element AI and their team of experts can help budding entrepreneurs to launch new start-ups based out of AI and machine learning techniques. The program directors at Element AI are working with extensive network of partners and corporate clients to identify promising AI based projects and have found many joint ventures and spin-off companies.
Importance of Deep Learning:
Deep learning is used by major Corporations like Google, Microsoft and Facebook in developing technology applications like accurate speech recognition systems. Microsoft researchers have unveiled a computing system which could recognize conversational speech with maximum accuracy similar to human beings. They demonstrate how deep learning has advanced in the last 5 years. By making use of deep neural networks, several tech giants like IBM and Google have pushed speech recognition to human-like levels. Google uses deep learning techniques for its search engine application that allows users to search based on images to produce the most accurate results. Lot of tech enthusiasts have started showing interest in this research area and its growing rapdily. Google recently acquired Deepmind which is a London-based think tank that makes use of deep learning techniques to crack the ancient game Go. Deep learning is a technology that all big companies are looking forward to invest and will determine the future of AI based products and applications.
The Team:
Yoshua Bengio, PhD is the co-founder and director of MILA (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) who is part of the founding team of Element AI. Jean-François Gagné acts as the CEO of the company and Nicolas Chapados, PhD acts as the Chief Science Officer. Their lab employs world-class scientists and research engineers who specialize in operations research and machine learning. They also collaborate with a huge network of academic researchers as part of their Faculty Fellowship program. They have many faculty fellows from various universities of Canada who are all part of the deep learning research group.
Bengio, Lecun and Hinton were 3 important people who started the research on deep learning during the 1980s. Bengio currently acts as a technical advisor to IBM and he is trying to help AI research reach into various multinational corporations through Element AI. The resources for deep learning are relatively rare and top companies in Silicon Valley are hunting for engineers who specialize in this area. Open AI was a start-up that was recently launched in Silicon Valley funded by famous entrepreneur Elon Musk and others that lured prominent AI researchers from Facebook and Google.