
DeepMind expands to Canada with new research office in Edmonton - jonbaer
https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-office-canada-edmonton/?href=
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rfrey
Trace the graph of Reinforcement Learning movers and shakers, and see how many
have their roots one or two levels up with Rich Sutton in Edmonton. David
Silver, for example, quit a career in games AI and moved his family to
Edmonton to study with Rich.

People are saying this is a coup for Edmonton, and it is. But it's also a coup
for DeepMind. Having Rich Sutton, and giving him the resources to keep his
best students together and working, is going to be amazing.

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65827
The amount of corporate worship that goes on around here is insane, holy hell
just tone it down a notch or two they aren't your friends.

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rfrey
What a strange thing to say.

I pointed out that a university professor living in a small northern city
actually turns out to have taught many of the other researchers currently
pushing forward the field of Reinforcement Learning. I named one professor (at
University College London) as an example.

I cannot imagine how that can be interpreted as corporate worship.

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rsingla
I am fairly surprised to see they opened up in Edmonton, rather than Toronto,
Montreal or even Vancouver.

Despite that, it's a huge win for UofA - especially when you have names like
Rich Sutton involved. I am quite excited to see the excellent growth of AI/ML
expertise in Canada considering the Vector Institute [0] was announced
recently as well!

[0] - [http://vectorinstitute.ai/](http://vectorinstitute.ai/)

~~~
cperciva
In addition to the excellent people already at UofA, Edmonton has the
advantage of being much cheaper than Toronto or Vancouver.

~~~
forgot-my-pw
Living condition in Edmonton is pretty terrible in the Winter. They still have
snow up to May sometimes. But on the other hand, this might be perfect for
research. Keeps you focused when there's nothing else to do. If it's a great
workplace, might as well hang out at work all the time.

~~~
wmil
Google's domed / canopied campus ideas actually make sense in Edmonton. In
Mountain View they're only protecting people from lovely weather.

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pmalynin
I'm currently a student at the UofA, and I do Machine Learning / Deep Learning
professionally; These are pretty good news, I know a lot of these professors
personally and they do a lot of great (fundamental) work in the field of RL /
ML, with a lot of collaboration happening between the university and the
private sectors.

Hopefully, this will provide the needed boost to the University's CS
department, and particularly Edmonton's tech sector.

~~~
aaronlevin
University of Alberta has a very strong pure mathematics department
(especially in Functional Analysis and Algebra). Pairing this with a strong
Computer Science department could eventually bring it to a level to compete
with Waterloo.

On the other hand, as someone who grew up in edmonton, I don't ever want to
live there again. It's a tough city to live in, though it has its beauty when
you look hard enough.

~~~
fnbr
I completely agree with that assessment. The U of A is a great school, and
summers in Edmonton are fantastic, but the winters are something else.

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bb101
Out of pure interest, how would you describe winters in Edmonton?

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aaronlevin
It's a combination of:

\- getting dark around 4/5pm \- extremely dry and cold \- winter starts in
October, lasts until late April \- massive urban sprawl so the city core is
dead during the winter, and therefore the city feels lifeless.

That's particularly bleak and definitely biased, but it's not far from the
truth.

~~~
refurb
The short days are definitely tough. The shortest day of the year has less
than 8 hours of sunshine. Sun comes up at 9am and sets by 4pm. However,
Edmonton is usually quite sunny in the winter.

Conversely the summers are great. It's light from 5am to 10pm, so get almost
17 hours of sunlight. If you include twilight, it's more like 18 hours.

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cknoxrun
It's not that different from much of Europe. Edmonton is at the same latitude
as Dublin.

~~~
noir_lord
I'm in Hull in the UK and we have basically identical latitude, Hull is just
fractionally north.

Winter nights are long but I love them, I sleep far better in the cold and
dark than hot and light, insomnia and the sun appearing at 4:30am sucks.

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jevonmac
Despite some of the negative comments you see (Edmonton does have a real
winter, on par with Toronto and Montreal for snow, but colder still) Edmonton
is a pretty awesome place to live and spend time. It has always been the ugly
step brother to Calgary and it took decades for oil wealth to really start to
change the city. When it did, it wasn't in the cowtown-n-skyscrapers Texas
style you saw in Calgary, but something a little less brash and more focused
on arts and culture.

Don't forget as well, you are a short trip to Jasper, the BC interior and all
sorts of absolutely amazing places that are busy and fun 4 seasons of the
year.

That is all to say, from the perspective of someone who does not live there,
Edmonton is an easy place to underestimate. There are many people who would
prefer it to Toronto/Montreal just for the simple fact that they can buy a
house, get around easily, and be much closer to the outdoors.

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dmix
I've been told my numerous people who grew up there that the winters in
Edmonton were brutal. Despite Toronto's reputation being a Canadian city the
winters are very mild by comparison and Vancouver, of course, is even easier.

Having lived in Montreal on the other hand I was surprised at the impact a
lengthier far snowier winter can have on a city if you didn't grow up with it,
after being familiar with Toronto/southern Ontario I found the winters in MTL
hard to deal with. A winter-heavy city really does create two very different
cities, the summers in Montreal are really amazing though, half the year it's
the best city in Canada.

Keeping people inside for winter may be a non-negative in academic research
but it's probably the most serious implication to consider lifestyle-wise when
moving to Edmonton. Not to mention the lack of access to events (both
culturally and industry-wise).

I'm not sure I could be optimistic for a Canadian city for technology outside
of Toronto, MTL, and Vancouver, besides the current available talent pool
which can create at least a decade-long attraction with someone exceptional
like Rich Sutton. Similar to sports teams talent attracting free agents. Which
is what we're talking about in this case, with advanced research in AI.

The Manhattan project's success was largely a result of the talent they
attracted early on, which blossomed into even more talent as a result, and it
was located in the middle of nowhere in an isolated New Mexico town.

City-wise it might not be attractive but talent is what matters at the end of
the day. The only risk then is that it can maintain an active research
community, aka consistently attracting talent. I'd be measuring the output of
the universities with highest priority in this case more than anything.

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briga
>Not to mention the lack of access to events

This is simply not true. There's some festival or other happening every
weekend all summer long in Edmonton.

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dmix
I'm in Toronto and I'm consistently jealous of the far better quality of
cultural events in Montreal. Which is why I still travel there often. So I
guess this is more about your tastes and expectations. The majority of top-
tier American performers typically visit Montreal on tours (likely due to
proximity of NYC) but only occasionally Toronto or Vancouver. By this I mean
for music, stand-up comedians, etc.

I'd imagine far far less so in Edmonton. And I don't mean quantity as much as
quality.

And I could give a number of examples in terms of just technology, infosec,
and design events in terms of quality of the various events available in
different Canadian cities.

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briga
Granted, but Edmonton is also much smaller than Montreal and Toronto. I think
Edmonton would compare favorably to similar-sized North American cities in
terms of cultural events.

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diego_moita
University of Alberta is a growing hub of AI studies. Dr. Jonathan Schaffer
has done some interesting work on AI applied to games, his program Chinook has
simply solved the game of checkers.

Bioware has offices in town and is a sponsor of the UofA CS department, so it
makes sense the university research is directed towards games.

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gcp
It's not just Schaeffer. The research department has a huge and deep history
of AI in games (GAMES group).

[https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/University+of+Albert...](https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/University+of+Alberta)

The principal author of AlphaGo did postdoc work at UofA in computer go. This
link isn't new - it's old friends and collegues.

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pesenti
The next AI winter is going to be really cold...

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pjmlp
This time it will be Python and C++ instead of Lisp, though.

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rorygreig
Apparently around a half of Deepmind's AI specialists are Canadian educated,
so no surprises here.

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drpgq
This is great news for Canada, but I'm curious what the pay would be like
relative to the usual lowballing for Canadian tech workers across all levels.

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forgot-my-pw
What a glorious day for Canada, and therefore the world.

