Ontario is no latecomer to the artificial intelligence age in Canada. In fact, decades ago, it was here that Geoffrey Hinton and a band of AI pioneers hunkered down in labs in Toronto and Waterloo, sustaining what has become today’s hottest discipline.
Their perseverance to unlock the potential of neural networks has made the province a leading source of AI talent and a magnet for tech’s biggest players. In Ontario, businesses can also tap into our world-renowned AI ecosystem to build a sustainable business model while championing the responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence.
And Canada stands out as a place that remains open to differing points of view, connected to the world and free to work collaboratively in our common quest to meet the challenges of our time.
Ontario leads Artificial Intelligence in Canada
Here are a few highlights from six Ontario cities that can help make AI work for your business:
Related Article: Canada is Emerging as a Global Leader in Artificial Intelligence
Guelph
From professors to alumni, contributions from University of Guelph’s brightest minds have made the city an interdisciplinary AI centre. Dr. Graham Taylor is Executive Director of the university’s Ethical Artificial Intelligence Centre as well as Associate Professor and lead for the school’s Machine Learning Research Group, which actively promotes entrepreneurial activities in AI.
Meanwhile, Guelph alumna Kelly Brookes has created the female-led artificial intelligence platform Quarter4. Her innovative platform harnesses sports data and statistics to predict team and player performance while engaging sports enthusiasts of all levels – a total score for Guelph!
Hamilton
Home to more than 300 life sciences companies and a powerful manufacturing sector, Hamilton is brimming with talent and is an ideal location for applying AI across a number of sectors.
Hamilton Health Sciences recently announced a partnership with Real Time Medical to develop an AI application for healthcare, bringing together technology developers along with close to 100 faculty, 32 residents and 12 fellows, medical physicists and engineering resources.
Meanwhile, in the auto sector, Hamilton’s Preteckt is working to provide a big data architecture designed specifically for the automotive industry. Their predictive diagnostics algorithms for fleet vehicle maintenance has been demonstrated to help save vehicle fleets over $2,500/year per vehicle monitored.
Toronto
The Toronto region is home to one of the highest concentrations of AI start-ups in the world, but Toronto’s burgeoning AI community is also attracting global attention from established companies such as Uber and Samsung.
Uber announced plans to invest more than $200 million in Toronto over five years as it opens an engineering office and expands its self-driving car centre. And tech heavyweight, Samsung, opened a new R&D office that focuses on strengthening collaborative research with world-leading scholars in the AI field.
Finally, the soon-to-be-built Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre at the University of Toronto will create the country’s largest university-based innovation node, advancing how AI and other disruptive technologies enrich lives.
Waterloo
Waterloo is at the centre of Canada’s emergence as a global leader in applied artificial intelligence. Recognized for its deep roots in math and computer science, Waterloo plays a key role in developing some of the best and brightest minds – you’d expect nothing less from Silicon Valley’s second leading source of tech talent.
The University of Waterloo – which has Canada’s top computer science program – is one of North America’s top-ranked AI universities, home to an AI Institute and is a key partner in Canada’s $230 million SCALE.AI supercluster.
Waterloo has a community of 90+ AI businesses serving the automotive, security, advanced manufacturing and consumer electronics industries, including giants like Google, Shopify and Square, and several homegrown, high-profile tech companies, including BlackBerry, OpenText, North, D2L, eSentire and Vidyard.
Ottawa
Canada’s capital is one of the hottest and most diverse tech hubs in North America. From the Canadian ecommerce giant, Shopify, to an expanding landscape of high-growth, advanced technology-enabled companies, Ottawa’s reputation as a low cost, high quality of life destination for businesses has led the city to take over as the continent’s highest concentration of tech talent.
Add to the mix Ottawa’s new Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) test track, “Ottawa L5”, – the first of its kind in North America – and you have a strong argument for forward-thinking automotive technology companies looking for a place to chart the future of mobility.
