
Montreal Is Leading the AI World Takeover - myth_drannon
http://www.cloudraker.com/en/cloud-co/montreal-is-leading-the-ai-world-takeover
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WhitneyLand
It's interesting most Americans don't seem to be aware of how much good tech
work goes on in Quebec (say kay-bec not kwa-bec). I went a few years to work
on SoftImage3D and it was the same with computer graphics, lots of talent and
innovation I was not aware of.

It may not be the "Silicon Valley of AI" but the point is they are a hotbed.

I would recommend it if you have an interest. People are very friendly, tons
of good restaurants, night life, and culture. You get a bit of European flavor
without leaving the continent. It is advisable to commit to a crash course in
French. Yes a lot of people speak english but for a variety of reasons it
makes a big difference in what you'll get out of being an expat.

~~~
scrollaway
I've been considering for a while moving to Montreal to be closer to the US
for practical reasons. Any idea how easy that is as a french citizen?

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StyloBill
French citizen living in Montreal. The easiest way is probably to come here
with a PVT (Programme Vacances-Travail, or Working Holiday VISA) but you must
be under 35.

You could also find a firm willing to hire you but there will be paperwork and
they'll have to prove that they haven't found a Canadian citizen for the
position you'll occupy. It's a bit of a pain for the company but some
companies are used to this (consulting firms mostly). You'll then have a 2
years VISA + working permit.

Or you can go the permanent resident way, from France, but it's gonna take a
long time (often 3+ years).

My advice is to come here as a tourist for a few weeks to have a feeling of
the city. Try to come in winter, as it's a bit harsh and a non negligible
number of expats go back to their home countries after their first winter
here. Other than that, it's a really beautiful place and I love living there
(been almost 5 years now).

Hope it's helpful!

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scrollaway
Thanks, that's very helpful.

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kelvin0
I think there are a lot of Intelligent, Educated, Talented and Creative people
in Montreal. But that probably can be said of many places across the globe. So
the raw materials for successful tech hub are (partially) available.

However, the government seems to to the major 'driving' force behind this,
just like they are doing with the Video Game industry in the Province, with
big subsidies, tax breaks which 'artificially' boosts local studios.

Now the future will tell if the artificial injection will create a lasting,
self-sustaining tech hub, or will simply evaporate in the next elections (if a
different government decides to cut the Business friendly regulations). But if
we take the historic example of the local video game studios (there are a TON
of studios around town!), there is a big potential for Montreal to become an
important AI center.

Ex-Gamedev (and Montrealer) ...

~~~
branchless
Media City has been around more than one electoral cycle in Montreal.

Also here the govt is selecting the _kind_ of jobs via tax breaks. The USA has
tax breaks for Facebook/Amazon and many others, but it's not targeted it's
just a catch-all rule of big companies paying no tax.

The state in any country creates the environment in which business lives. The
idea that the USA is some kind of "natural" environment for business and
everything else is synthetic is not something I can agree with.

~~~
kelvin0
Yes you are right about the subsidies, they have been around for the major
part of the last 15-20 years. So chances are, they will continue to be a
driving force which no new elected government will want to 'cut' (financially
and politically impractical).

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builtinbuffalo
This isnt as far fetched as one may think.

There's a lot of talent in Montreal and great technology has been developed
there.

There's a lot more entrepreneurs than many assume from their daily
interactions.

Example:

The worlds first visual word processor was developed in Montreal by Stephen
Dorsey - well before Gates, Jobs and Woz.

He then went on to develop real time fax over IP in the late 80s / early 90s
and owns the patent on t38.

Steve and his company are still active, developing communications tech that's
used worldwide.

This is just one example of many I've unexpectedly encountered doing business
in the area.

Never say never :)

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jeffmcmahan
"AI is now the technology shaping our world more than ever before."

This, the first sentence of the article, does not express a thought. Read it
carefully. It's on a par with "More people have been to Russia than I have."

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mac01021
It's not _quite_ that bad.

If you make the (ridiculous) assumption that, at any given time, there is
_exactly one_ technology that is shaping 5he world more than it ever did
before, then the sentence becomes intelligible. Of course, that's not what
they meant...

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ajkjk
Cloudraker is based in Montreal, unsurprisingly.

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ryanobjc
Air Canada isn't a global company. It's a flag carrier for Canada only.

The rest is wishful thinking. Building an industry isn't just top down (all
the braggy stuff was about top down), the bottom up stuff is critical and
important.

Good luck with it. But I feel like while the research might be OK, the
commercialization will come out of the bay area anyways. There just isn't
enough quality people to do this in Canada.

~~~
mablap
What do you mean by "bottom up" in this context? They mention having a lot of
researchers (grunts) and now a brand new startup accelerator.

> There just isn't enough quality people to do this in Canada.

Do you really believe that would be the cause?

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rocky1138
I believe he/she means that, while it's important to have quality
infrastructure in place (fun locations, decent food, good pipes) to support
startups and tech, it's absolutely critical to have a small group of hackers
which actually DO things. Otherwise it's just theatre.

The jury is still out on whether one comes before the other or vise versa.

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hackerboos
I've been thinking about making the move from Toronto to Montreal. Way cheaper
rents and the city has better transport than Toronto, but I'm worried that
getting by in only English is going to be an issue.

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33degrees
It depends; finding work is usually the biggest problem, but it's easier when
you work in tech than in other fields. I know several people who done the same
but work remotely

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aryehof
Has AI advanced from the 1990s? Or has there been a change in the environment
it can be applied to, with the rise of big data, big infrastructure - big
everything?

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thedevil
They learned how to train deep nets ten years ago (and are getting better fast
as new techniques are invented). As a result, neural nets started taking over.

Big Everything is important, but without the new techniques for deep nets, AI
would not be so sexy right now.

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edblarney
This should not be downvoted, he is essentially correct.

'AI' has always been around, but the 'big leap' we've seen recently is
entirely due to researchers finally able to make Neural Nets actually work :).

'Deep Learning' really refers to a specific kind of Neural Network.

The first application was image recognition. It's also used a lot now in voice
recognition - and they're trying to jam it into everything possible.

I think it's basically fair to say that at least in 2016 AI pretty much boils
down to Deep Learning / Neural Nets to move something more classical along in
terms of capability.

What 'AI' means changes over time, but I think it's safe to say the renewal
and hype is based on the 'big eureka' in Neural Nets and their relevant
applications.

~~~
_delirium
Even that I don't think involved much of a "eureka" moment, but mostly
incremental improvements due to the environment changing. A lot of neural-net
techniques from the '80s and '90s that didn't work that well at the time, now
work well because we have sufficient data and computation power (especially
via GPUs) to make them work. There have been improvements as well of course,
but they're evolutionary improvements, while the big breakthrough was big data
+ big compute.

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dsjoerg
No aspiring or self-respecting AI researcher could take an article like this
at face value. "The largest concentration of independent AI researchers in the
world"? Citation needed. Better yet, data.

~~~
mablap
Here's one data point: There are about 150 academic AI researchers in in an
area of 1.4 square kilometre radius in downtown Montreal.

~~~
edblarney
Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a
clustering of big Unis downtown.

So, in a way, it has a 'geography' advantage to such numbers :).

That said, I'm highly doubtful that they will be able to effectively leverage
the knowledge.

Bombardier etc. are slow, monolithic entities, who will no doubt take AI up,
but I wonder how effectively and profitably for local entities.

Air Canada is an airline operator - much like Verizon etc. - they 'operate'
they don't 'innovate'.

On the startup side, Montreal is weak - no as bad as other places unknown for
startups (say, Houston?), but it does not have the 'acquiring entities' to
take up the funnel. Toronto has this disadvantage as well, but because it's
bigger, English, and a little more well-known, I think it's less of a problem.

The language issue cannot be overlooked - a little less than 1/2 of Montreal
is primarily English speaking, and though basically every Francophone speaks
English, it does affect how networks are oriented. Francophone networks are
weak. They are very local, and poor, and for a variety of reasons a little
'self oriented'. This is a Quebec thing, but also a French thing, and
naturally a thing that happens when you're an enclave of people speaking
something other than English in North America.

Finally - there is a lack of industrial spirit in Montreal. They are
academically, socially and creatively inclined, but they don't want to build
'products and services' and aren't keen on making 'big bucks'.

The series of 'big business' magnates that came up in Quebec over the last 40
years have been mostly locally oriented: taking up TV/Media, Energy and retail
banking sectors during the 'quiet revolution'. The big 'startup' here is a
Circus!

In my very Francophone neighbourhood, 100% of the waiters and waitresses will
tell you they are 'in school' or 'actors' or 'photographers' \- yet many of
them are late 20's early 30's - and it's not exactly hollywood around here. An
acquaintance calls herself a 'playwright' and she's written 2 tiny productions
for the local theatre with 2 actors each - no props or anything. She's late in
her 'career' already. This attitude is due to a bunch of historical factors
and it runs deep.

I'm not suggesting people can't build great companies here, and surely some
will pop up - and there are some natural advantages such as lots of students
and ridiculously low cost of living ... but I'm not sure if anything big will
come of it.

To grow a startup you need all sorts of motivated people with special skills:
recruiting, supply chain, sometimes niche stuff like ASICS etc. - I never,
ever meet anyone here remotely in that vein.

It's a great city, but I'm not sure it will ever be the 'leader' in anything
applied or industrious. I predict a few wins here and there.

~~~
bogomipz
>"Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a
clustering of big Unis downtown."

This statement is not true, its not even close:

Montreal with a population of 1.65 million and 248K students would mean around
15% of the population are students.

Larger students per capita in North America would include:

Ames, Iowa 34.2 percent.

Ithaca, New York 32.8 percent.

State College, Pennsylvania 31.8 percent

Lawrence, Kansas 31.1 percent,

College Station-Bryan, Texas 30.6 percent.

For just raw student population numbers in North America:

Chicago has a student population of 670K.

Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami have 380k students each.

San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, and Detroit each have 300K students.

Sources:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Montreal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Montreal)

[http://www.citylab.com/design/2012/08/americas-leading-
colle...](http://www.citylab.com/design/2012/08/americas-leading-college-
towns/3054/)

~~~
edblarney
Sorry to disagree.

"With access to six universities and twelve junior colleges in an 8 kilometer
(5 mi) radius, Montreal, Quebec (Canada) has the highest proportion of post-
secondary students of all major cities in North America. "

All of the examples you gave are small college towns.

'Ames' 'Ithaca' 'State College' \- those are not cities etc.

Montreal has 6 major universities and other colleges crammed right downtown in
a tiny radius.

San Francisco does not have 300K students in the city. There are only 800K
residents in SF, that would make almost 50% students :). The 'Bay Area' \-
sure. But the bay is huge - and not really even a city.

Chicago is a massive, sprawling city with 600K students.

Dallas-Forth Worth - again - massive, sprawling cities, geographically spread
out.

Montreal - not including the suburbs, just the city proper, has 100's of
thousands of students.

I think the only other city with the student density would be Boston and the
numbers may be off because Harvard and MIT are technically in Cambridge, not
Boston.

~~~
bogomipz
What the OP stated and what I was responding to was:

>"Montreal has more students/capita than anywhere in North America, due to a
clustering of big Unis downtown"

They did not state Montreal has the highest student population density areas
which is what you are now saying by qualifying that with some spatial
component. They said highest "per capita."

They also did not specify "city", they said "anywhere."

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m3kw9
They will be exported because the capital isn't readily available there to
bring these ppl together in one place.

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KON_Air
"X is leading Y"

I thought that kind of marketing died in '00s.

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Apane
Very cool.

