Department of Computer Science

‘One of the great minds of the 21st century’: U of T celebrates ��Ƶ’s Nobel Prize

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 17:24:21 +0000

‘One of the great minds of the 21st century’: U of T celebrates ��Ƶ’s Nobel Prize

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 10/17/2024 - 13:24

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University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, attends a celebration event held at the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus (photo by Mac Pattanasuttinont)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Leah Cowen

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus

Wesley Hall

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Artificial Intelligence

CIFAR

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

The 2024 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics - known to many as the "godfather of AI" - was honoured at an event attended by a who's who of the Toronto research community

There were standing ovations, peals of laughter and even a few tears as the ��Ƶ welcomed ��Ƶ back to campus after he won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

A University Professor Emeritus of computer science, Hinton traded the “cheap hotel room in California,” where he received the life-changing news, for an emotional reception in the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus’s airy event hall.

The Oct. 10 event drew U of T leaders, supporters, dignitaries and other luminaries. They included Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, University Professor Emeritus John Polanyi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986, and Massey College Principal James Orbinski, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Doctors Without Borders in 1999.

Several of Hinton’s many collaborators and proteges also attended the event – not to mention students who were simply eager to catch a glimpse of the “godfather of AI.”

Hinton chats with U of T Scarborough Professor David Fleet and Google Research Scientists Sara Sabour and Daniel Watson (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Though sleep deprived, Hinton regaled the audience with fond recollections of his early years as an AI researcher, snapshots of his trademark dry humour and warm expressions of gratitude for mentors, collaborators and, of course, his many students.

“I’ve been blessed to have brilliant graduate students and post-docs,” Hinton said.

“I had a principle when selecting graduate students: ‘If they’re not smarter than me, what’s the point?’ And I’ve had quite a number of graduate students who were smarter than me.

“They did things I wouldn’t have been able to do, so I’d like to thank them.”

He said two figures in particular played a huge role in the work that led to his Nobel Prize, which he shared with Princeton University’s John J. Hopfield. The first was Terry Sejnowsky, a computational neuroscientist and former student of Hopfield’s, who worked with Hinton on Boltzmann machines – a period Hinton described as “the most happy research time of my life.”

He also praised the contributions of the late David Rumelhart, a psychologist at Stanford University, who worked with him to develop backpropagation algorithms, a key breakthrough.

“[He] should have won the Nobel Prize,” Hinton said. “But unfortunately, Dave got a horrible brain disease and he died quite young.” (The Nobel organization doesn’t award the honour posthumously).

Hinton poses for a picture with Assistant Professor Chris Maddison, who was one of the last graduate students Hinton supervised (photo by Mac Pattanasuttinont)

Chris Maddison joined Hinton’s research group as an undergraduate and was one of the last students he supervised. Now an assistant professor in U of T’s departments of computer science and statistical sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Maddison lauded Hinton as “a steadfast mentor and supporter who saw strength in me that I didn’t see” and said one of his greatest attributes was his sheer enthusiasm.

“No matter what’s going on, you can find him in the lab on Sundays at 8 p.m. playing with his MATLAB scripts like a child playing with Legos,” Maddison said. “He never lost that child-like sense of wonder that buoyed him and the group.”

U of T President Meric Gertler said, via video message from Indonesia, where he was on university business, that Hinton is “one of the great minds of the 21st century” (photo by Johnny Guatto)

U of T President Meric Gertler, who was in Indonesia on university business when the prize was announced, hailed Hinton in a video message as “one of the great minds of the 21st century” and someone who “literally created new ways of thinking about thinking and learning.”

He noted that Hinton’s AI leadership extends to the pressing question of responsible and safe development of the technology.

“With his Nobel win, he’s now perfectly positioned to amplify this concern on a world stage.” President Gertler said.

Hinton shares a laugh with University Professor Molly Shoichet of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (photo by Johnny Guatto)

The event’s guest list served as a reminder of Hinton’s outsized influence on the research community in Toronto and beyond, drawing key figures from: the Vector Institute, where Hinton is co-founder and chief scientific adviser; the Schwartz Reisman Institute of Technology and Society, where he sits on the advisory board; and CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research), where Hinton is an adviser and longtime fellow.

Hinton poses for a photo with Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, reminded the accomplished audience that Hinton’s historic achievement – both the Nobel Prize and the AI revolution he helped spark – was the result of years toiling in an “unpromising backwater” of AI research.

“It is tempting to think that it happened almost overnight, but it didn’t,” Cowen said.

University Professors Emeriti – and fellow Nobel Prize-winners – ��Ƶ and John Polanyi have their photo taken together (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Hinton took time to reflect on periods of personal struggle and tragedy – and thank those who helped him in his hour of need.

When his wife had an incurable form of cancer, he recalled how U of T President Emeritus David Naylor, a physician, medical researcher and former dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, carried out research on a possible alternative treatment that was being explored – incorporating input from top medical experts – and presented him with a report of his findings.

“He’s a tremendous human being,” Hinton said of Naylor, who was in the audience.

Hinton shares a moment with U of T President Emeritus David Naylor (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Hinton also recalled how, when his first wife became ill in 1993 – also with cancer – his post-doctoral trainee Peter Dayan, now a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, stepped in to advise Hinton’s graduate students, giving him time to care for his ailing spouse.

“At times like this, you remember the people who helped you most when things were very difficult,” Hinton said.

He later pointed out that Dayan went on to supervise one of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Demis Hassabis, joking that this made Dayan “the meat in a Nobel sandwich.”

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada was lucky to have Hinton, who was born in the U.K., and thanked his daughter for sharing her father with the country, with science and the world (photo by Johnny Guatto)

For Minister Freeland, Hinton’s award showcased the value of ideas and of fundamental research. She said Hinton’s Nobel Prize sent waves of pride across Canada, which she said was “lucky as a country” that Hinton arrived on its shores back in 1987.

“Geoff shows that you can be a really brilliant intellectual and also a really great human being who cares about his community and his country,” Freeland said. “I am constantly struck by how Geoff thinks about the bigger implications of his ideas and how Geoff thinks about really wanting to make Canada and the world a better place.”

Hinton chats with Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, who thanked him for his friendship and mentorship – and his dedication to science and scholarship (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Following the program – which also featured remarks by U of T Chancellor Wes Hall, Faculty of Arts & Science Dean Melanie Woodin and Christine Szustaczek, U of T’s vice-president, communications – Hinton mingled with members of the audience, shook hands with students and caught up with former colleagues and trainees.

Clockwise from top left: Christine Szustaczek, Wes Hall, Chris Maddison, Leah Cowen, ��Ƶ and Melanie Woodin (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Brendan Frey, professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and CEO of AI-powered therapeutics startup Deep Genomics, said he was one of many who earned his PhD under Hinton’s supervision.

“I think of Geoff as the father of a community that includes myself, other graduate students and all the people who didn’t believe but then came to believe – and he inspired all of us,” said Frey, who shared a hug with his former supervisor following the event.

“I’m really happy for him.”

In his words: ��Ƶ reflects on his Nobel Prize win

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 16:26:59 +0000

In his words: ��Ƶ reflects on his Nobel Prize win

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 10/10/2024 - 12:26

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��Ƶ, University Professor Emeritus of computer science at the ��Ƶ and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, takes questions during a virtual press conference hosted by U of T (image via YouTube)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Global Lens

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

��Ƶ

Global

Nobel Prize

President Meric Gertler

Subheadline

"If you believe in something, don’t give up on it until you understand why that belief is wrong"

Empower curiosity-driven research. Follow your convictions. Think not just about how to advance technology, but how to direct its use for good.

These were among the key messages delivered by ��Ƶ, University Professor Emeritus of computer science at the ��Ƶ and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, during an Oct. 8 press conference held by the university to mark his historic award.

Widely regarded as “the godfather of AI,” Hinton was named a co-winner of the prize – alongside John J. Hopfield of Princeton University – for his work on Boltzmann machines and artificial neural networks, which laid the groundwork for advancements in AI and stimulated new research directions in physics.

U of T President Meric Gertler hailed Hinton for having “a profound impact on multiple fields and disciplines,” crediting “his leadership and exemplary mentorship of young scholars” with helping U of T become a global leader in AI and machine learning.

“I think one cannot overstate the impact of a win like this on the ability of Canada, Toronto and the ��Ƶ to be able to welcome talented newcomers, great students and wonderful faculty from across the country and around the world because of the recognition that arises with Geoff’s win,” President Gertler said.

For his part, Hinton echoed his remarks from earlier in the day that he was “flabbergasted” to receive the prize and pleased that the Nobel committee recognized the advancements in artificial neural networks.

He also answered questions about his influences, legacy and how it feels to go from being an obscure researcher who toiled in a largely forsaken field to a Nobel Laureate – and his advice for researchers who hope to one day follow in his footsteps.

Here are five key themes that emerged from Hinton's news conference:

His legacy

“I’m hoping AI will lead to tremendous benefits, to tremendous increases in productivity and to a better life for everybody. I’m convinced that it will do that in health care.

“My worry is that it may also lead to bad things, and in particular, when we get things more intelligent than ourselves, no one really knows whether we’re going to be able to control them.

“We don’t know how to avoid [catastrophic AI scenarios] at present. That’s why we urgently need more research. So I’m advocating that our best young researchers, or many of them, should work on AI safety and governments should force large companies to provide the computational facilities they need to do that.”

A collaborative effort

“I think of the prize as a recognition of a large community of people who worked on artificial neural networks for many years.

“I’d particularly like to acknowledge my two main mentors: David Rumelhart, with whom I worked on the backpropagation algorithm … and my colleague Terry Sejnowsky, who I worked with a lot in the 1980s on Boltzmann machines and who taught me a lot about the brain.

“I’d also like to acknowledge my students. I was particularly fortunate to have many clever students, much cleverer than me, who actually made things work. They’ve gone on to do great things.

“I should also acknowledge Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun who were close colleagues and very instrumental in developing this whole field.”

Canada’s research strengths

“I think the main thing about Canada as a place to do research is there isn’t as much money as there is in the U.S., but it uses its money quite wisely.

“In particular, the main funding council for this type of research, called NSERC, uses money for basic curiosity-driven research, and all of these advances in neural networks came out of basic curiosity-driven research – not out of throwing money at applied problems, but out of letting scientists follow their curiosity to try and understand things. And Canada’s quite good at that.”

Many thought he was wasting his time

“It was a lot of fun doing the research, but it was slightly annoying that many people – in fact, most people in the field of AI – said that neural networks would never work.

"They were very confident these things were a waste of time and we would never be able to learn complicated things – for example, understanding natural language – using neural networks. And they were wrong."

Believe in your ideas

"My message is this: if you believe in something, don’t give up on it until you understand why that belief is wrong.

"Often, you believe in things and you eventually figure out why that’s a wrong thing to believe in. But so long as you believe in something and you can’t see why that’s wrong – like, ‘the brain has to work somehow so we have to figure out how it learns the connection strengths to make it work’ – keep working on it and don’t let people tell you it’s nonsense if you can’t see why it’s nonsense."

U of T experts tackle questions about AI safety, ethics during panel discussion

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:33:43 +0000

U of T experts tackle questions about AI safety, ethics during panel discussion

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 10/02/2024 - 14:33

Cutline

From left: U of T's Roger Grosse, Sedef Kocak, Sheila McIlraith and Karina Vold take part in a panel discussion on AI safety (photo by Duane Cole)

Kyle Coulter

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Our Community

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

Artificial Intelligence

Centre for Ethics

Department of Computer Science

Department of Philosophy

Faculty of Arts & Science

Vector Institute

Victoria College

Subheadline

"We should be building AI systems that promote human flourishing – that allow human beings to live with dignity and purpose, and to be valued contributors to society”

What does safe artificial intelligence look like? Could AI go rogue and pose an existential threat to humanity? How have media portrayals of AI influenced people’s perceptions of the technology’s benefits and risks?

These were among the pressing questions tackled by four experts at the ��Ƶ and its partner institutions – in disciplines ranging from computer science to philosophy – during a recent panel discussion on AI safety.

Sheila McIlraith, professor in U of T’s department of computer science at the Faculty of Arts & Science and Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute, said the notion of AI safety evokes different things to different people.

“Computer scientists often think about safety critical systems – the types of systems that we’ve built to send astronauts to the moon or control our nuclear power plants – but AI safety is actually quite different,” said McIlraith, an associate director at the U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI).

“For me personally, I have a higher bar, and I really think we should be building AI systems that promote human flourishing – that allow human beings to live with dignity and purpose, and to be valued contributors to society.”

The event, hosted by SRI in partnership with the Vector Institute, the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, the Centre for Ethics and Victoria College, invited McIlraith and her fellow panelists to discuss how AI technologies can be aligned with human values in an increasingly automated world.

They also discussed how risks surrounding the technology can be mitigated in different sectors.

Karina Vold, the event’s moderator, underscored the challenge of building safe AI systems in an uncertain world (photo by Duane Cole)

Moderator, Karina Vold, assistant professor in the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, noted that because AI systems operate “in a world filled with uncertainty and volatility, the challenge of building safe and reliable AI is not easy and mitigation strategies vary widely.”

She proceeded to ask the panel to share their thoughts on the portrayal of AI in popular culture.

“The media devotes more attention to different aspects of AI – the social, philosophical, maybe even psychological,” said Sedef Kocak, director of AI professional development at the Vector Institute.

“These narratives are important to help show the potential fears, as well as the positive potential of the technology.”

The discussion touched on several topics related to AI safety (photo by Duane Cole)

Roger Grosse, associate professor in U of T’s department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and a founding member of the Vector Institute, said that safety concerns around AI are not merely rooted in science and pop culture, but also in philosophy.

“Many people think that the public’s concerns regarding AI risks come from sci-fi, but I think the early reasoning regarding AI risks actually has its roots in philosophy,” said Grosse, who also holds Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society.

“If we’re trying to reason about AI systems that don’t yet exist, we don’t have the empirical information, and don’t yet know what their design would be, what we can do is come up with various thought experiments. For example, what if we designed an AI that has some specific role, and all of the actions that it takes are in service of the role?

“For the last decade, a lot of the reasons for being concerned about the long-term existential risks really came from this careful philosophical reasoning.”

The discussion also touched on the dangers of AI models misaligning themselves, how to guard against bias in the training of large language models, and how to ensure that AI models with potentially catastrophic capabilities are safeguarded.

“This [safeguarding] is an area where new research ideas and principles will be required to make the case,” said Grosse. “Developers saying, ‘Trust us’ is not sufficient. It’s not a good foundation for policy.”

Despite addressing topics surrounding potential harms and risks of AI, the panelists also shared their optimism about how AI can be wielded for the greater good – with Grosse noting AI offers the promise of making knowledge more widely accessible, and Kocak focusing on the myriad benefits for industries.

Watch the Sept. 10 conversation below:

Waabi, founded by U of T's Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

lanthierj — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 20:26:16 +0000

Waabi, founded by U of T's Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

lanthierj Wed, 06/19/2024 - 16:26

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(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Global Lens

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Computer Science

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Arts & Science

Waabi, a self-driving trucking startup founded by ��Ƶ artificial intelligence (AI) expert Raquel Urtasun, has raised US$200 million in series B funding to support the deployment of fully autonomous, AI-powered trucks in 2025.

The funding round was led by previous investors Uber Technologies Inc.– where Urtasun previously worked as chief scientist of the self-driving division – and Khosla Ventures and includes an array of other high-profile strategic investors including NVIDIA Corp., Volvo Group and Porsche Automobil Holding.

The latest funding brings total investment in Waabi to more than C$380 million and will be used to expand the Toronto-headquartered company’s team in both Canada and the U.S., as well as to launch driverless commercial deliveries in Texas by next year.

(photo Nick Iwanyshyn)

Urtasun, a professor in the department of computer science at U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and co-founder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, said Waabi’s end-to-end AI system is advancing self-driving technologies to frontiers beyond the reach of other industry players thanks to its unique ability to carry out complex reasoning.

“What we have at Waabi is a technology that brings generative AI to the physical world for the first time, where the idea is that you have a single AI system that is able to reason like a human does, and is able to generalize to situations everything that might happen on the road – including things that it has never seen before,” she said.

“It does so in a way that is interpretable, so you can validate and verify the system, and provably safe, which is very important as you deploy these massive robots in the real world.”

Paired with Waabi’s advanced simulator, the AI system reduces the need for time-consuming road testing, Urtasun explained.

The announcement came hours before Urtasun took to the main stage at the Collision tech conference in Toronto to deliver a talk on generative AI. Her remarks touched on the technological underpinnings of generative AI and future applications, and outlined how Waabi is bringing generative AI to the physical world – starting with trucking.

Raquel Urtasun at the 2024 edition of Collision (photo by Polina Teif)

Urtasun is one of several experts from U of T’s technology, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem who are speaking at Collision. Others include University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ, a world-renowned AI luminary and investor in Waabi.

“Self-driving technology is a prime example of how AI can dramatically improve our lives,” Hinton said in a news release. “Raquel and Waabi are at the forefront of innovation, developing a revolutionary approach that radically changes the way autonomous systems work and leads to safer and more efficient solutions.”

Earlier in the week, Urtasun brought one of Waabi’s trucks to the St. George campus and showcased some of its capabilities to Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tony Gaffney, president and CEO of the Vector Institute, and Michael Brudno, professor in the department of computer science and chief data scientist at the University Health Network.

From left: Melanie Woodin, Raquel Urtasun, Tony Gaffney and Michael Brudno (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Urtasun underscored the importance of the company being headquartered in Toronto. “We’re an AI company and Toronto has always been at the forefront of AI,” Urtasun said. “There’s tremendous talent here, a busy ecosystem, and for me it’s important to be in Canada, where I’m very aligned with the values of the country as well.”

Reflecting on her journey at U of T, where she started as an assistant professor in 2014, Urtasun said she initially assumed she would “just be an academic doing research for the rest of my life” – but soon realized that involvement in industry would be critical to advancing AI technologies for use in the real world.

“Three years ago, I saw a tremendous opportunity to start a new company and what you see today is the fruit of that, where we’re really close to deployment on public roads without a human [driver],” said Urtasun.

“It’s amazing – not just for Waabi, not just for Canada, but for the industry at large.”

U of T, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:19:19 +0000

U of T, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:19

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(photo by Daria Perevezentsev)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Acceleration Consortium

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Chemistry

Department of Computer Science

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Art & Science

Hospital for Sick Children

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

Startups

University Health Network

The ��Ƶ is collaborating with the University Health Network, the Hospital for Sick Children and Sunnybrook Research Institute on a new program that aims to leverage the expertise of entrepreneurs and business leaders to advance commercialization of emerging medical technologies and regenerative medicine research.

Funded by the Government of Ontario, the Entrepreneur-In-Residence program will support projects that display high potential for clinical impact and spin-off company formation, spanning areas ranging from regenerative therapies and medical devices to AI-powered clinical tools and apps for patient care.

The one-year pilot program is being launched with the help of a $300,000 grant from Intellectual Property Ontario (IPON), a provincial agency that was established in 2022 to provide IP resources and supports to researchers and businesses.

“The Entrepreneur-in-Residence program will help take medical innovations developed in academic and hospital environments and translate them into the commercial arena, generating economic opportunity for the region and expanding clinical impact globally,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“The ��Ƶ is grateful to IPON for its support of this initiative, which stands to strengthen existing networks of knowledge exchange and collaboration between the university and its partner hospitals.”

Jill Dunlop, left,Ontario’s minister of colleges and universities, said post-secondary institutions are critical incubators of innovation and commercialization (photo courtesy of IPON)

The program will see Entrepreneurs-in-Residence – individuals with a track record of launching science-based ventures and shepherding projects from proof-of-concept to incubation, acceleration and seed funding – liaise with U of T’s Innovations & Partnerships Office and IPON to generate and protect IP. It is designed to add capacity and scope to U of T’s thriving entrepreneurship and commercialization ecosystem, including existing Entrepreneur-in-Residence initiatives such as those offered by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Medicine By Design, an institutional strategic initiative (ISI).

“In today’s global knowledge-based economy, Ontario’s post-secondary institutions are critical – not just as centres of learning, but as incubators for innovation and commercialization,” said Jill Dunlop, minister of colleges and universities, in a recent announcement of new IPON-funded initiatives.

“Through the province’s support of IPON, our government is ensuring the social and economic benefits of publicly funded research stay in our province, so that Ontarians and the Ontario economy benefit from these new discoveries and innovations.”

Dunlop also spoke at an April 8 event with Christine Allen, a professor in U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy who has an extensive track record of translating and commercializing lab discoveries.

Christine Allen, far right, is a professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the founder and CEO of Intrepid Labs (photo courtesy of IPON)

At the event, Allen highlighted the growth of her startup, Intrepid Labs Inc., which she co-founded with Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a professor in the departments of chemistry and computer science in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and director of the Acceleration Consortium. The company marries Allen’s prowess in drug formulation and development with Aspuru-Guzik’s expertise in AI and advanced computing in order to accelerate the development of next-generation medicines. In the fall, the company closed a pre-seed round of US$4 million.

“The availability of top-notch talent in AI and life sciences made Toronto a great place to launch our company,” says Allen, who is Intrepid’s CEO, noting all four of the startup’s co-founders are from U of T.

She added that U of T is a powerhouse for entrepreneurship and intellectual property, ranked second in North America for university-based startups, and that companies with founders or co-founders from U of T make up a significant percentage of some of the fastest-growing companies in Ontario.

“This is the beauty of being at the ��Ƶ and having the MaRS Discovery District across the street and all the hospitals around us. It’s such a rich environment,” she says.

“We can do this in Toronto.”

Allen stressed that a thriving lab-to-market ecosystem is critical to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

“Students are increasingly seeking out roles in the private sector,” she says. “For them to see other students and faculty members [found startups] helps them realize that it’s possible for them to start companies, too.”

��Ƶ to give scholarly talk on whether AI will eclipse human intelligence

lanthierj — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 14:52:19 +0000

��Ƶ to give scholarly talk on whether AI will eclipse human intelligence

lanthierj Tue, 10/24/2023 - 10:52

Cutline

��Ƶ (photo by Polina Teif)

Adina Bresge

Topic

Our Community

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

��Ƶ

Students

Vector Institute

After capturing the world’s attention with his warnings about the existential risks posed by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, ��Ƶ will be engaging directly with researchers and scholars at a ��Ƶ event.

A U of T University Professor emeritus who is often referred to as “the godfather of AI,” Hinton will tackle the question “Will digital intelligence replace biological intelligence?” during an academic talk at Convocation Hall on Oct. 27. (Tickets to the in-person event are sold out, but a recording will be shared publicly at a later date).

His lecture will be followed by a Q-and-A session co-ordinated by Sheila McIlraith, a professor in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science who is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and an associate director at U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

The session will give Hinton an opportunity to directly engage with researchers and scholars from across the university regarding the revolutionary technology he helped create.

“AI is re-shaping the way we live, work and interact with each other,” says McIlraith. “Given the current public discourse about AI, it’s particularly important that scholars across disciplines learn from each other and engage in an informed exchange of views regarding the societal implications of this transformative technology.”

U of T provides an ideal forum for such scholarly discourse, she adds, because of U of T’s historical role in the development of AI, the “breadth and depth” of expertise at the university and the city of Toronto’s position as a global hub of AI research and development.

"The conversation around AI is no longer housed in the computer science lab or within the offices of Big Tech. It needs to be multidisciplinary to advance our collective understanding of the opportunities and the potential risks so we can work to avoid the risks while benefiting from all that AI has to offer.”

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science are co-hosting Hinton’s talk in collaboration with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Cosmic Future Initiative at the Faculty of Arts & Science.

U of T's Alán Aspuru-Guzik on self-driving laboratories that use robotics, AI to automate routine parts of experiments

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 19:36:08 +0000

U of T's Alán Aspuru-Guzik on self-driving laboratories that use robotics, AI to automate routine parts of experiments

noreen.rasbach Wed, 10/09/2019 - 15:36

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“All of us scientists, we don’t take advantage of automation as much as we could,” says Alán Aspuru-Guzik (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Topic

Our Community

Artificial Intelligence

Chemistry

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

Robotics

To accelerate progress in labs all over the world, quantum mechanic Alán Aspuru-Guzik wants researchers to embrace laboratories that can make smart decisions all on their own. He calls them self-driving laboratories, and they combine chemistry with robotics and artificial intelligence to automate experiments – all the way down to automating decisions on what conditions to try next.

Aspuru-Guzik is the principal investigator of the Matter Lab at the ��Ƶ and is appointed to both the departments of chemistry and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science. His multidisciplinary approach is one he hopes will spread.

“All of us scientists, we don’t take advantage of automation as much as we could,” says Aspuru-Guzik.

“So in my lab, we have been thinking a lot about how robotics and artificial intelligence can combine with chemistry to create something that we like to call self-driving laboratories: basically, a laboratory where, as much as possible, the mundane decisions of what the experiment to be done next, the next conditions to try, are actually optimized using artificial intelligence.”

Automating labs saves reagents, time and other resources. Manually running experiments and stopping to analyze the data slows down progress, so automation fundamentally change the way science is approached.

Aspuru-Guzik is starting with energy technology. From solar cells to batteries, every sustainable energy technology involves thin films of materials. So he built a machine to manufacture and test thin films made under different conditions to maximize their performance.

“Within five years, I would like my lab and my collaborators around the world to be able to demonstrate that these self-driving laboratories not only are successful, but they actually have positive change in the energy ecosystem,” says Aspuru-Guzik.

He envisions that a laboratory in Taiwan might take his technology and find a better way to filter water, or that scientists in Mexico might find a better molecule for energy regeneration. Worldwide reach would have limitless possibilities for rapid discovery, he says.

This article first appeared on the Research2Reality website.

U of T researcher's website uses AI to help writers reach their audience

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 16:08:39 +0000

U of T researcher's website uses AI to help writers reach their audience

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 12/07/2018 - 11:08

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The website created by Kawin Ethayarajh, a master’s student in U of T's department of computer science, is based on an algorithm that leverages a subfield of AI known as natural language processing (photo by Nina Haikara)

Nina Haikara

Topic

Our Community

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Graduate Students

Many technology companies say they want to hire more women. But ��Ƶ researcher Kawin Ethayarajh found the language and tone of most job postings in the male-dominated industry tend to be more appealing to men.

“Even if the recruiter [or writer] didn’t realize it, they were implicitly writing things that would be more well-received by a male audience,” explains Ethayarajh, who is a master’s student in the U of T's department of computer science.

His solution is Toasted, a website that uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to estimate how your writing will appeal to your audience and makes suggestions on how you can improve. It’s based on an algorithm that leverages a subfield of AI known as natural language processing – analyzing and retrieving information from language – to evaluate text for gender neutrality and audience.

Ethayarajh says, on average, the distribution of female and male tones in language is equal, but the degree to which something is feminine or masculine depends on the context in which it appears – which is why Toasted picks out words used within a context.

“For example, a word that is strongly male biased would be ‘squad’, because when used in an article or in copywriting, it tends to be surrounded by ‘these guys did this,’ or ‘the male sports squad did this,’” Ethayarajh says.

“When [Toasted] deems a correlation of this sort to be strong enough, it highlights the term.”

When Toasted is more confident in its predictions, it gives users alternatives for each highlighted word that would be more appealing to the audience they are trying to reach. Among the examples on Ethayarajh’s website is ad copy from Kylie Cosmetics by Kylie Jenner. The text is scored as “fairly effective” at speaking to a female audience – 57 per cent better than average.

Ethayarajh’s graduate studies research, under the supervision of Professor Graeme Hirst, includes understanding vector spaces and word embeddings, a technique used to help machines understand human language. He co-wrote a paper, “Towards Understanding Linear Word Analogies” with Hirst and Assistant Professor David Duvenaud that marks a major step towards better understanding these vector analogies.

As for Toasted, users can also check how well their writing appeals to college students, retirees and others. A Google job ad for a software engineer, for example, is average for both men and women but speaks more clearly to a software engineering audience than it does to accountants.

Ethayarajh says his goal is to add more audience groups. He would also like to define audiences by geography.

“Let’s say I’m selling a product that I think will do well in Southern California. Culturally, I want to use terminology and copywriting that will appeal to people there, more so than in other parts of the U.S.”

So why did he name the website “Toasted?”

“I took inspiration from a Lucky Strike ad campaign of the 1960s,” says Ethayarajh. “Toasted makes you think of a very warm, comfortable thing, so to me, toasted is the essence of what good copywriting can be.”

How one U of T alumnus went from slinging drinks in undergrad to ��Ƶ's AI lab

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 14:34:47 +0000

How one U of T alumnus went from slinging drinks in undergrad to ��Ƶ's AI lab

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 10/10/2018 - 10:34

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Nick Frosst, a U of T computer science alumnus and Google Brain researcher, will be appearing on a panel during a Nov. 3 conference focused on AI research opportunities for graduates with bachelor's degrees (photo by Nina Haikara)

Nina Haikara

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Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

��Ƶ

Woodsworth College

Nick Frosst, a researcher at Google Brain in downtown Toronto, didn’t require a master’s degree or PhD to launch a career in artificial intelligence research – all he needed was a chance meeting at a bar in Koreatown.

“I was working at Snakes and Lattes and started talking to a customer about the computability of a game he was playing,” says Frosst, a ��Ƶ Woodsworth College alumnus who, at the time, was in the second-year of his undergraduate studies in the department of computer science.

That fateful conversation led to an introduction to York University’s John Tsotsos, a former U of T associate chair of computer science, and a position as an undergraduate research assistant. Not long after, Frosst was striking up similar conversations with his U of T professors and undertaking several independent research studies – a path that led him to his current gig at Google Brain.

On Nov. 3, Frosst will be a panelist at the Start AI conference at the MaRS Discovery District. Organized by U of T’s Undergraduate Artificial Intelligence Group, it’s the organization’s first-ever conference to focus on opportunities in the AI field for bachelor’s graduates.

Over 300 people from across the province are expected to attend.

While Frosst says those early independent research studies at U of T “didn’t get huge results,” he nevertheless described the overall experience as invaluable.

“I learned a lot about what it means to set up an experiment and how to talk to people about what you’re working on,” he says.

“There are many professors doing interesting research – stuff that's really groundbreaking and pushing the boundaries – so they want and need help. U of T, especially, has the potential for undergraduate research to be really commonplace.”

As for Google Brain Toronto, Frosst is now part of a 10-person research team led by U of T University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ. Hinton, a vice-president and fellow at Google, is widely known as the “godfather of deep learning,” a branch of artificial intelligence that trains computers to reason like humans. He will be Start AI’s keynote speaker.

“I got connected to the Google Brain team because I was working [for Google] in Waterloo and spending a day or two here in Toronto,” says Frosst. “I certainly wanted to work with [Hinton], so I introduced myself and made that known. He’s a really funny guy, so it’s pretty easy to strike up a conversation with him.”

At Google Brain, Frosst and his colleagues do fundamental research that seeks to improve AI’s neural networks. This doesn’t mean simply making AI better at solving problems, or improve its usability in the next app, he says, but improving the neural networks themselves – which, in turn, creates a host of new problems that need solving.

In a paper published last year, Hinton, Frosst, as well as lead author and fellow Google researcher, Sara Sabour, who has a master’s in computer science at U of T, showed off what they believe is the next evolution: capsule networks. It immediately caused a stir. Frosst says Sabour’s project intends to define an entirely new structure for neural nets.

Building digital humans: Would-be U of T entrepreneurs to put a non-'creepy' human face on digital assistants

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 16:03:04 +0000

Building digital humans: Would-be U of T entrepreneurs to put a non-'creepy' human face on digital assistants

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 09/13/2017 - 12:03

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Matt McPherson, the head of corporate development at Quantum Capture, shows off "Alyssa," one of the Toronto startup's digital humans (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

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Chris Sorensen

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Entrepreneurship

Would-be entrepreneurs enrolled in a business of software course at the ��Ƶ are being asked to play God in the digital realm.

The theme for the course, offered by the department of computer science, is “creating virtual humans” using virtual reality, or VR, technology provided by Quantum Capture, a local Toronto startup that provides tools for content creators working in VR, augmented reality (AR) and other 3D platforms.

The students will use Quantum Capture’s platform to create ultra-realistic 3D characters for a variety of potential industry applications – everything from building police training simulators to creating virtual tech support workers.

In effect, they will be putting a human face on virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.

“We like to think of it as the embodiment of a chat bot,” says Matt McPherson, a U of T alumnus and former sessional lecturer who’s now Quantum Capture’s head of corporate development.

The course’s instructors, Helen Kontozopoulos and Mario Grech, got the idea for the theme after Quantum Capture joined the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL, where both Kontozopoulos and Grech are co-founders and directors. The lab is one of several entrepreneurial hubs at U of T, which has emerged as a leader in developing research-based startups. The accelerator focuses on growing startups that specialize in turning U of T research in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality and blockchain into game-changing companies.

“This is the first time we’re actually leveraging teams out of our accelerator to produce the problem sets we use in the class for our students,” Grech says, adding that it’s possible some of the student-led teams may decide to pursue their startup ideas further by applying to DCSIL’s accelerator program upon completion of the course.

Among the problems Quantum Capture has asked the students to tackle: building realistic virtual humans for doctors, police and soldiers to interact with in training simulators; creating virtual teachers for language instruction courses; and, in what may be perhaps the toughest feat of all, developing virtual tech support workers who can deftly deal with irate customers.

While two of Quantum Capture’s founders, Morgan Young and Craig Alguire, came from the video game industry, McPherson says the technology is quickly moving beyond the entertainment space as companies seek to make their computer-generated assistants and agents more interactive and engaging – basically more like the humans they seek to replace.

“There are certain social cues that are better for conveying information during a real-life interaction,” says McPherson, who has a master's in information studies from U of T, before he opens his laptop and shows off one of the company’s emotive creations. Her name is “Alyssa.”

Quantum Capture’s approach involves taking high quality, 360 degree images of, say, an actor with the company’s 112-camera rig, housed in an Etobicoke warehouse. The resulting 3D image is then animated using motion capture technology and made to look lifelike with behavioural software.

But making a virtual human seem like a real thing is a fraught exercise thanks to a phenomenon known as the “uncanny valley.” The term, coined by a Japanese roboticist in the 1970s, refers to the creepy feeling one gets upon interacting with a robot or computer-generated character that appears almost human, but not quite. (The “valley” in question refers to the drop-off in “familiarity” experienced by observers, as represented on a graph.)

One of the better known pop culture examples is the 2004 animated film Polar Express, starring Tom Hanks. Writing on CNN.com, one reviewer called the CGI Christmas movie about a group of kids on a magical train trip to the North Pole “at best disconcerting, and at worst, a wee bit horrifying.”

Needless to say, few businesses are willing to risk inflicting a similar nightmare on their customers. As a result, there has been a tendency to avoid creating ultra-realistic virtual agents in favour of ones that are more cartoon-like.

McPherson, however, believes it’s possible to bridge the chasm with Quantum Capture’s technology.

“Our research has shown that what makes the character look creepy is when the lip synch is off and when the eye behaviour or other subtle cues aren’t quite right,” he says.

“But you can actually push through the uncanny valley in immersive environments like VR and AR. You can make the eye behaviour start to look pretty accurate based on cognitive science literature.”

To that end, Quantum Capture is incorporating into its platform and tools a lip synch algorithm that was developed by U of T's dynamic graphics project lab.

McPherson says that he’s looking forward to seeing the potential applications devised by the U of T students, adding that part of the reason Quantum Capture decided to partner with U of T on the course is to test potential markets for the technology.

He believes it’s only a matter of time before virtual humans – non-creepy ones – become a familiar part of our day-to-day existence.

“We interact with humans all the time,” McPherson reasons. “It’s the ultimate user interface.”

Department of Computer Science

‘One of the great minds of the 21st century’: U of T celebrates ��Ƶ’s Nobel Prize

In his words: ��Ƶ reflects on his Nobel Prize win

His legacy

A collaborative effort

Canada’s research strengths

Many thought he was wasting his time

Believe in your ideas

U of T experts tackle questions about AI safety, ethics during panel discussion

Waabi, founded by U of T's Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

U of T, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

��Ƶ to give scholarly talk on whether AI will eclipse human intelligence

U of T's Alán Aspuru-Guzik on self-driving laboratories that use robotics, AI to automate routine parts of experiments

This article first appeared on the Research2Reality website.

U of T researcher's website uses AI to help writers reach their audience

How one U of T alumnus went from slinging drinks in undergrad to ��Ƶ's AI lab

Read more about the paper by Sabour, Frosst and Hinton at U of T News

Building digital humans: Would-be U of T entrepreneurs to put a non-'creepy' human face on digital assistants

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at U of T

Department of Computer Science

‘One of the great minds of the 21st century’: U of T celebrates ������Ƶ’s Nobel Prize

In his words: ������Ƶ reflects on his Nobel Prize win

His legacy

A collaborative effort

Canada’s research strengths

Many thought he was wasting his time

Believe in your ideas

U of T experts tackle questions about AI safety, ethics during panel discussion

Waabi, founded by U of T's Raquel Urtasun, raises US$200 million to launch self-driving trucks

U of T, hospitals launch pilot program to boost commercialization of medical innovations

������Ƶ to give scholarly talk on whether AI will eclipse human intelligence

U of T's Alán Aspuru-Guzik on self-driving laboratories that use robotics, AI to automate routine parts of experiments

This article first appeared on the Research2Reality website.

U of T researcher's website uses AI to help writers reach their audience

How one U of T alumnus went from slinging drinks in undergrad to ������Ƶ's AI lab

Read more about the paper by Sabour, Frosst and Hinton at U of T News

Building digital humans: Would-be U of T entrepreneurs to put a non-'creepy' human face on digital assistants

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at U of T

‘One of the great minds of the 21st century’: U of T celebrates ��Ƶ’s Nobel Prize

In his words: ��Ƶ reflects on his Nobel Prize win

��Ƶ to give scholarly talk on whether AI will eclipse human intelligence

How one U of T alumnus went from slinging drinks in undergrad to ��Ƶ's AI lab