Deep Learning

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Subheadline

'Godfather of AI' asks: Will Digital Intelligence Replace Biological Intelligence?

Does artificial intelligence actually understand? Would knowing more about its inner workings help to keep it in check? Could AI come up with the law of gravity if it hadn’t yet been devised?

These were among the questions that professors and students put to Geoffrey Hinton during a recent event at the University of Toronto’s 1,730-seat Convocation Hall.

The ��TV University Professor emeritus of computer science and “godfather of AI” was there to deliver an academic talk about – and take queries on – the key differences between biological and digital intelligences, whether large language models such as ChatGPT understand what they are doing and the existential risks posed by unfettered development of the technology he helped create.

“My guess is that they will take over – they'll be much, much more intelligent than people ever were,” said Hinton, who added that humanity was likely “just a passing stage” in intelligence’s evolution.

“That's my best guess and I hope I'm wrong.”

The Oct. 27. event was co-hosted by ��TV’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science in collaboration with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Cosmic Future Initiative.

Hinton’s talk came amid a flurry of AI-related developments. Three days earlier, Hinton, fellow Turing Award-winner Yoshua Bengio and 22 other AI experts, including ��TV professors Gillian Hadfield, Tegan Maharaj and Sheila McIlraith, released a paper calling for governments and Big Tech firms to take action on the issue, including by devoting one-third of their AI research and development budgets to AI safety. And on Oct. 30, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.

Hinton took questions from audience members, many of them professors and students (photo by Johnny Guatto)

“AI is poised to transform how we live and work,” said Professor Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, after she summarized the seminal work Hinton did on deep learning neural networks with the help of his graduate students.

“At this pivotal moment when we consider the opportunities and risks of AI, who better to guide us in this conversation than Dr. Hinton himself?”

Hinton, who is also a cognitive scientist, explained why he began sounding the alarm about AI earlier this year after spending decades developing the technology to better understand how the human mind works. In short: It is the rapid advances in large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s PaLM coupled with the scaling advantages that digital intelligences enjoy due to their ability to be copied and share information.

And he warned that neural networks’ learning capacity is likely to grow even further as more sources of information, including video, are incorporated into their training. “They could also learn much faster if they manipulated the physical world,” he said.

He finished his presentation by suggesting AI chatbots may even be capable of subjective experience – a concept that is tied up with ideas about consciousness and sentience. “The reason I believe that is because I think people are wrong in their analysis of what subjective experience is,” he said.

Left to right: Sheila McIlraith, Geoffrey Hinton, Gillian Hadfield and Melanie Woodin (photo by Johnny Guatto)

The talk was followed by a lengthy Q-and-A session co-ordinated by McIlraith, a professor in the department of computer science and a faculty member at the Vector Institute, where Hinton is chief scientific adviser. McIlraith said she hoped the event would inspire attendees to “help chart a course toward a future where digital and biological intelligence both enrich the human experience.”

Scholars – both professors and students – in fields ranging from philosophy to cognition probed Hinton’s thinking and, in some cases, his conclusions.

Shalev Lifshitz, a fourth-year undergraduate student in computer science who is doing AI research in McIlraith’s group at ��TV and the Vector Institute, got into a back-and-forth discussion with Hinton about whether tools like ChatGPT ever truly understand what they are doing (Hinton says yes).

“I’m on the fence – I was on the fence before – but I thought he made very interesting points,” Lifshitz said immediately following the event. “I think it depends on what the definition of ‘understanding’ is. I’m not clear on that yet.”

Others, like Jennifer Nagel, a professor in the department of philosophy at ��TV Mississauga, wondered if future AI might find us interesting or special “in a way that would make the best and brightest artificial intelligences take our side.”

Scholars in fields ranging from philosophy to cognition probed Hinton’s thinking during the Q-and-A (photo by Johnny Guatto)

“I mean, for me to be an interesting conversational partner with you right now, I don't even have to be smarter than you … I just have to have some knowledge that you don't have – or even just some way of looking at a problem that you find interesting,” she said.

Hinton was also asked to give advice to students studying in the field.

“Work on AI safety,” he said, noting that top researchers such as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, a ��TV alumnus, and Roger Grosse and David Duvenaud – both associate professors of computer science at the university and Vector Institute faculty members – are all working on the subject.

For many, the event was simply a rare chance to hear directly from a world-renowned researcher whose work has already forever changed our lives.

Guijin Li, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, said she is really interested in Hinton’s thoughts on AI development and jumped at the chance to hear him in person.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

—with files from Mariam Matti

Risks of artificial intelligence must be considered as the technology evolves: Geoffrey Hinton

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 17:56:19 +0000

Risks of artificial intelligence must be considered as the technology evolves: Geoffrey Hinton

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/29/2023 - 13:56

Cutline

Geoffrey Hinton, a University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, speaks onstage at the Collision technology conference (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Tabassum Siddiqui

Topic

Subheadline

"Godfather of AI" expands on his warnings at Collision conference in Toronto

Artificial intelligence can be used as a force for good – but there are also big risks involved with the generative technology as it gets even smarter and more widespread, “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton told the Collision tech conference in Toronto on Wednesday.

In a Q&A with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic magazine, Hinton – a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who is a University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto – expanded on concerns he has recently expressed about the technology he played a key role in developing.

“We have to take seriously the possibility that [AI models] get to be smarter than us – which seems quite likely – and they have goals of their own,” Hinton said during a standing-room-only event at the conference, which was expected to draw nearly 40,000 attendees over three days.

“They may well develop the goal of taking control – and if they do that, we’re in trouble.”

Hinton, who recently left Google so he could speak more freely about AI risks, was one of several ��TV community members scheduled to speak at Collision, which is billed as North America’s “fastest-growing tech conference” and counts the university as an event partner.

The government of Ontario used the occasion of the conference to announce that the Vector Institute – a partnership between government, universities and industry where Hinton is chief scientific adviser – will receive up to $27 million in new funding to “accelerate the safe and responsible adoption of ethical AI” and help businesses boost their competitiveness through the technology.

During his talk, Hinton outlined six potential risks posed by the rapid development of current AI models: bias and discrimination; unemployment; online echo chambers; fake news; “battle robots”; and existential risks to humanity.

Hinton spoke before a standing-room only crowd at the conference (photo by Johnny Guatto)

When Thompson suggested that some economists argue that technological change over time simply transforms the function of jobs rather than eliminating them entirely, Hinton noted that “super intelligence will be a new situation that never happened before” – and that even if chatbots like ChatGPT only replace white-collar jobs that involve producing text, that would still be an unprecedented development.

“I'm not sure how they can confidently predict that more jobs will be created for the number of jobs lost,” he said.

Hinton added much of his concern stems from his view that AI may soon demonstrate the capacity to reason.

“The big language models are getting close – and I don’t really understand why they can do it, but they can do little bits of reasoning,” he said, predicting that AI will evolve over the next five years to include multimodal large models that are trained on more than just text, including videos and other visual media.

“It's amazing what you can learn from language,” he said. “But you're much better off learning for many modalities – small children don't just learn from language alone.”

Maximizing the creative potential of AI and minimizing its harms requires distinguishing between its potential risks, Hinton added, noting many in the tech sector have downplayed his warnings over the existential risk since he began speaking out.

“There was an editorial in Nature yesterday where they basically said fear-mongering about the existential risk is distracting attention [away] from the actual risks,” Hinton said. “I think it's important that people understand it's not just science fiction; it’s not just fear-mongering – it is a real risk that we need to think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it.”

Thompson pointed out that fellow AI luminary Yann LeCun – who jointly won the 2018 A.M. Turing Award (often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of computing”) with Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for their work on deep learning – has suggested that the positive aspects of AI will overcome any negative ones.

“I’m not convinced that a good AI that is trying to stop bad AI can get control,” Hinton said. “Before it's smarter than us, I think the people developing it should be encouraged to put a lot of work into understanding how it might go wrong – understanding how it might try and take control away. And I think the government could maybe encourage the big companies developing it to put comparable resources [into that].

“But right now, there’s 99 very smart people trying to make [AI] better and one very smart person trying to figure out how to stop it from taking over. And maybe you want to be more balanced.”

The Godfather in Conversation: Why Geoffrey Hinton is worried about the future of AI

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 20:09:40 +0000

The Godfather in Conversation: Why Geoffrey Hinton is worried about the future of AI Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/22/2023 - 16:09

Topic

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Geoffrey Hinton

“It’s a time of huge uncertainty,” says Geoffrey Hinton from the living room of his home in London. “Nobody really knows what’s going to happen … I’m just sounding the alarm.”

In The Godfather in Conversation, the cognitive psychologist and computer scientist ‘known as the Godfather of AI’ explains why, after a lifetime spent developing a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, he is suddenly warning about existential threats to humanity.

A University of Toronto University Professor Emeritus, Hinton explains how neural nets work, the role he and others played in developing them and why the kind of digital intelligence that powers ChatGPT and Google’s PaLM may hold an unexpected advantage over our own. And he lays out his concerns about how the world could lose control of a technology that, paradoxically, also promises to unleash huge benefits – from treating diseases to combatting climate change.

“Maybe when they become smarter than us, we’ll be able to keep them benevolent and we will be able to keep them caring much more about people than they care about themselves – unlike people,” Hinton says.

“But maybe not.”

Hinton also offers advice to young researchers entering the field – including students at ��TV, where the responsible and ethical development of AI is supported by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and many other research initiatives.

“Look at how many people are working on making these things better and how many people are working on preventing them from getting out of control,” Hinton says, noting the ratio is tilted heavily toward the former, particularly at big tech companies.

“Where could you make the most impact?”

Watch The Godfather in Conversation

The Legal Singularity: ��TV Law profs on how AI will make the law 'radically' better

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 16:16:44 +0000

The Legal Singularity: ��TV Law profs on how AI will make the law 'radically' better

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 11/04/2022 - 12:16

Cutline

(Image by Pitiphothivichit via Getty Images)

Nina Haikara

Topic

Benjamin Alarie, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, has long believed artificial intelligence will bring seismic change to the legal profession and, consequently, society – resulting in what he’s dubbed ‘the legal singularity.’

Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie

In a forthcoming book, Alarie tackles the topic with Abdi Aidid, who recently joined the faculty as an assistant professor.

The pair argue that the proliferation of AI-enabled technology – and specifically the advent of legal prediction – will radically change the law profession and facilitate “a functional ‘completeness’ of law, where the law is at once extraordinarily more complex in its specification than it is today, and yet operationally vastly more knowable, fairer, and clearer for its subjects.”

Alarie says that’s in stark contrast to how law is practised now.

“There is a ton of uncertainty in the law – we often just don't know what the right legal answer is,” says Alarie, who is the Osler chair of business law. “Uncertainty about facts and law drives litigation. Even if there aren't disputes about the events involved, litigation arises due to a dispute about how the law applies to those facts.”

Alarie and Aidid suggest the book,The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better (University of Toronto Press, 2023), should be of interest not only to lawyers and technologists, but anyone interested in the future of the labour force or social institutions beyond the law.

“The legal singularity reflects the full development of our legal system, becoming more complete and accessible through advanced technology,” says Aidid. “The idea is that once we are able to reduce uncertainty, individuals and institutions will have a real-time sense of their legal rights and obligations.”

Alarie’s interest in legal technology began more than a decade ago, when he served as associate dean of the faculty’s JD program and was tasked with revisiting how the law faculty delivered its first-year curriculum.

“I remember sitting at my desk and thinking, it’s been almost 40 years since we’ve had a major reform to the curriculum,” he says. “What could change over the course of the next several decades?

“I thought about the deep learning work that was being done by [University Professor Emeritus] Geoffrey Hinton in the computer science department [in the Faculty of Arts & Science] here at the ��TV, and how computing power keeps doubling every couple of years and is becoming massively less expensive over time.”

He also recalled Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a renowned legal scholar and former U.S. Supreme Court justice, once offered a provocative view that law is all about prediction. Alarie thought to himself: “Well, what is machine learning? It’s a prediction technology. All these ideas were swimming around in my mind: machine learning is about prediction. Machine learning is getting way better. Law is ultimately about prediction.

“I'd better be thinking about how machine learning is going to influence the practice of law, because that's going to have big implications for how we want to teach our students.”

In 2015, Alarie co-founded legal tech startup Blue J Legal with ��TV Law faculty members Anthony Niblett and Albert Yoon. The company’s software draws upon AI to provide instant and comprehensive answers in complex areas of tax, labour, and employment law.

Aidid joined Blue J Legal in 2018.

“While I was an adjunct professor here, teaching courses in legal research and writing, I was seeing first-hand the difficulty [with the way] we currently do legal research and was just hoping for a technological solution,” says Aidid, who served as the startup’s director and vice-president of research, and remains with the company as an innovation specialist.

“Being able to help build Blue J and contribute to improving a profession that I care deeply about was really appealing to me.”

The authors argue that the legal profession has so far failed to keep pace with other industries and professions.

“If you were transported back 50 years into a law school classroom, or a courtroom, it would look largely the same as it does today,” says Aidid. “There might be a laptop on someone's desk, but by and large, we're doing the same things. It’s not just about tech adoption – it's about changing some of the core assumptions about what it means to be a good lawyer, legal academic and a good law student.”

That includes how lawyers bill their time.

“If you come to me and you ask me a legal question, I might have an instinct about the answer but in order to give you professionally sound advice, I'm going to go off and do research until I feel fairly certain about my advice,” says Aidid. “But with the advent of machine learning, you're able to quickly synthesize all the case law in a matter of seconds.”

Alarie says future technological innovation that can interpret legislation, legal principles and translate them into appropriate legal guidance will result in better legal decisions for society. He says it’s not meant to supplant or replace legal professionals, but to enable them to provide fairer and more informed decisions. “For example, it would provide judges with more information to better exercise their discretion,” Alarie says.

He adds that that the notion of a legal singularity is best regarded as an ongoing process of improvement, rather than a final destination. Aidid, for his part, emphasizes the important role lawyers will play in making sure legal technologies are “designed appropriately, ethically and effectively.”

One thing is clear, the authors say: the application of AI to the law is no longer a fanciful sci-fi thought experiment.

“How we get from here to there – wherever that there is – could be a bumpy ride,” says Alarie. “Our goal is to really spread these questions – about the legal singularity – as widely as possible because we don't think they have easy answers, but they are important questions.”

Gift from Schmidt Futures to spark a revolution in AI-based STEM research at the University of Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 21:00:39 +0000

Gift from Schmidt Futures to spark a revolution in AI-based STEM research at the University of Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 10/26/2022 - 17:00

Advancement Staff

Topic

Acceleration Consortium

Data Sciences Institute

Chemistry

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Hospital for Sick Children

Meric Gertler

Vector Institute

With the goal of accelerating scientific research through the application of artificial intelligence, Schmidt Futures is investing $148-million in nine global universities, including the University of Toronto.

The announcement launches the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program of Schmidt Futures. A large-scale initiative supporting the work of early-career scholars in engineering and the natural sciences, such as mathematics, chemistry or physics, the program fosters their uptake of vital tools in artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is not just a field in its own right but also an important tool for research. It can find patterns to enable research that solves important challenges – across fields from climate change to human health and beyond – more quickly and more efficiently. To accelerate the adoption of AI into scientific methodologies, the Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs initiative aims to spark a significant increase globally in the number of scientists working with cutting-edge AI tools.

“As the home of deep learning, the University of Toronto is proud to partner with Schmidt Futures on this forward-looking program, which will accelerate humanity’s ability to meet some of the most important challenges of our time,” said Meric Gertler, president of ��TV. “The Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs program provides tremendous opportunities for the emerging generation of STEM researchers. On behalf of the ��TV community, I would like to thank Schmidt Futures for their vision and generosity.”

��TV is the only Canadian university chosen for the program. Its highly diverse community – its existing postdoctoral fellows come from 89 countries – and global links make it an ideal centre to support the Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs global network.

“The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program of Schmidt Futures, will create an immediate acceleration of AI applications across several disciplines. We are proud to partner with these exceptional universities, especially the University of Toronto, on this important initiative,” said Stu Feldman, chief scientist at Schmidt Futures. “The Fellowship will provide these postdoctoral fellows with the advanced tools to increase the scope and speed of their research while discovering new and innovative use cases for AI within their field. ��TV’s thoughtfully crafted program design, strong base of alumni in the scientific world, high volume of leading-edge scientific research, and deep history of important AI research give us full confidence in an impactful outcome.”

Creating a cohort of AI-fluent researchers

The Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs program will support nearly 300 postdoctoral fellows each year for six years. ��TV hosts 10 in the first year of the program and 20 annually thereafter. The support includes networking and research collaborations between participating universities; a robust series of workshops, conferences and lectures; and training in how to apply AI techniques.

The fellows will not only expand the scope of their own research but will also establish their careers as AI-fluent scientists, ready to expand new research methodologies across a range of fields through their future work.

Apply to become an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow. Visit schmidtfellows.utoronto.ca. Deadline is Nov. 21, 2022.

At U of T, the Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs becomes one of the university’s most prestigious postdoctoral programs. Working closely with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, two senior faculty members lead the initiative. Alán Aspuru-Guzik is the director of U of T’s Acceleration Consortium, a global network of researchers, industry and government that is leading a convergence of materials science with AI and robotics. Lisa Strug is the director of U of T’s Data Sciences Institute, one of the world’s largest clusters of scientists working on innovative approaches to data that drive actionable research insights.

The Canada Research Chair in Genome Data Science, Strug is a statistical geneticist in the Faculty of Arts & Science who develops novel approaches to identifying the genetic contributors to complex human disease. She is cross-appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Hospital for Sick Children, and is also the director of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, Ontario Region.

As a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical and Quantum Chemistry, Aspuru-Guzik works to accelerate the discovery of new molecules and materials needed for a sustainable future, using novel, disruptive approaches. He is also a Google Industrial Research Chair in Quantum Computing, and is the founder of two startups.

A wide-ranging vision for solving global challenges

Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that brings talented people together in networks to prove out their ideas and solve hard problems in science and society.

The CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, Eric Schmidt has hands-on experience with the transformative power of finding and supporting innovative minds – at scale. Wendy Schmidt, a journalist and competitive sailor, has created multiple non-profits in the areas of global sustainability and human rights. With Schmidt Futures, their focus is on building networks of visionary minds with the talent to solve society’s problems.

��TV is Canada’s leading research university and the home of seminal work in artificial intelligence, from deep learning and neural networks to the interfaces between AI and the natural sciences.

��TV is also home to a vibrant and diverse community of nearly 1,000 postdoctoral fellows. More than half of U of T postdocs work in the physical sciences. Two thirds go on to careers in academia and a third go on to work in the private sector. The Schmidt AI in Science Postdocs will only enrich this remarkable environment for discovery and impact.

“Thank you, Schmidt Futures, for this generous vote of confidence in U of T programming and in the exceptional talents who thrive in our postdoctoral programs,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “The prestigious Schmidt AI in Science Postdoc program will help catalyze novel solutions to tough challenges. It is the kind of thoughtful support that powers real innovation.”

Researcher combines AI and microelectronics to create neural implants that fight brain disorders

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:56:45 +0000

Researcher combines AI and microelectronics to create neural implants that fight brain disorders

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 10/17/2022 - 13:56

Cutline

Xilin Liu tests signal integrity of a prototype neural implant, which can be used to activate a neuromodulation therapy that helps manage symptoms of brain disorders (photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Breaking Research

Brain

University Health Network

Neural implants can help treat brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy by directly modulating abnormal activities – and the University of Toronto’s Xilin Liu is working with microelectronics and artificial intelligence to make this emerging technology both safer and smarter.

“Neurons talk to each other in part via electrical signals, and a therapeutic neural implant produces electrical stimulation – like a pacemaker for the brain,” says Liu, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “In cases of tremors or seizures, the stimulation attempts to restore the neurons to a normal condition.

“It’s as if the stimulus turns the neural networks off and on – almost like restarting a computer, though it’s definitely not that simple. Scientists don’t fully understand how it works yet.”

Liu’s team integrates neural implants into miniature silicon chips via the same process for fabricating chips used in today’s computers and smartphones. This technology, referred to as CMOS for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, allows them to reduce the device’s physical dimensions and power consumption, thus minimizing the risks associated with the implant’s initial surgical procedure and long-term use.

“We’ve developed many new microelectronic design techniques, such as high precision electrical stimulation with charge balancing,” says Liu. “We try to come at the problem from many different angles.”

Liu is part of the neurotechnology centre CRANIA, a collaboration between the University of Toronto and the University Health Network, that brings together electrical and computer engineers alongside neuroscientists, data and material scientists and clinicians. Together, they research ways to improve brain health and chart alternative treatment paths, especially for those who don’t respond well to current medications.

In a recent project, Liu and his team sought to leverage the power of AI to maximize the implants’ clinical efficacy and minimize the adverse effects of excessive stimulation.

Xilin Liu holds a prototype of a neural implant chip, 3 millimetres by 3 millimetres, on the tip of his finger (photo by Matthew Tierney)

The team turned to a type of AI called deep learning (DL) – algorithms that, after being trained, can extract deep-level information when faced with novel data. These models proved to be especially powerful at identifying hidden biomarkers often neglected in conventional approaches and they outperformed conventional algorithms when detecting the optimal timing.

“Most existing implants produce electrical stimulation at a constant rate, regardless of the patient’s condition,” says Liu. “With DL, we can activate the neural implants at the optimal time and only when necessary.”

However, the high computational cost of deep learning models makes it a challenge to integrate, especially considering that it’s essential that all processing runs locally in the implants.

“The cloud would provide more processing power, but you can’t have an implant fail because it loses telecommunication service – when a patient goes into an elevator or airplane, for example,” says Liu.

To reduce this computational cost, Liu and his team developed techniques for training and optimizing the models for each patient’s condition. A recent case study showed that detection of epileptic seizures by deep learning in low-power neural implants was comparable to state-of-the-art algorithms that run in high-performance computers. This work was published in 2021 in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

Liu says that his team’s technology can be used in a broad range of clinical applications beyond epilepsy, noting that up to one billion people worldwide suffer from various brain disorders.

The necessity of open-minded collaboration is something Liu aims to impress on the graduate students who take his new neuromodulation course, debuting this fall.

“There’s so much going on in the brain,” says Liu. “You need a range of experts to understand and provide solutions for these disorders, which will only become more common as human life expectancy increases.”

Future targets include chronic pain, depression and dementias. Liu is already contemplating how neuromodulation therapies may help people with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Impaired sleep has been associated with Alzheimer’s, and many people suffer from different levels of sleep disorders,” says Liu. “We are investigating closed-loop neuromodulation techniques to improve sleep quality by reinforcing or inhibiting certain brain rhythms.

“The brain is pretty amazing.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visits ��TV for AI roundtable

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 14:02:18 +0000

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visits ��TV for AI roundtable

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/26/2022 - 10:02

Cutline

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, left, shakes hands with ��TV President Meric Gertler outside of Simcoe Hall (photo by Polina Teif)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Global Lens

Leah Cowen

CIFAR

Geoffrey Hinton

Global

Meric Gertler

Robotics

South Korea

Vector Institute

The University of Toronto welcomed South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to campus last week to discuss artificial intelligence (AI) – its rise, potential applications and opportunities for further collaboration between ��TV and South Korean partners.

President Yoon hailed Toronto as an AI powerhouse, saying that Canada’s status as a world leader in AI and a centre of the global AI supply chain was the result of the country recognizing the potential economic and social impacts of the technology early on.

He also said the tenacity and persistence of researchers such as University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer of the AI field of deep learning, served as a “benchmark” for South Korean efforts to advance the technologies of the future, adding that he was delighted to visit ��TV, which he described as “one of the most prestigious universities in North America.”

��TV President Meric Gertler, for his part, said he was “deeply honoured” to welcome President Yoon, who, he said, “has made it a priority to work closely with South Korea's allies and partners, advancing openness, human rights, democracy and the rule of law, with clear purpose and integrity.”

(Photo by Polina Teif)

President Gertler noted that the South Korean delegation’s visit comes at a time when Toronto has emerged as the third-largest tech hub in North America, with the city’s AI and machine learning ecosystem at the heart of this growth.

“Together with the Vector Institute, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), MaRS and other partners – all within a walking distance of this room – we have created one of the world’s richest pools of talent,” President Gertler said.

He added that ��TV, its local partners and South Korean organizations stand to learn much from each other when it comes to AI research, development, innovation and education.

“Partnering with Korea’s leading universities, innovative firms and exceptionally talented researchers is an extraordinary opportunity for all parties to benefit as we deepen our collective commitment to excellence and to tackling the world’s most pressing challenges.”

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

President Yoon’s visit to ��TV took place during the first day of his two-day visit to Canada, which included a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa the following day.

It also came less than two weeks after the government of Ontario concluded a trade mission to South Korea and Japan, led by Vic Fedeli, the province’s minister of economic development job creation and trade.

Fedeli, who attended the ��TV event, said Toronto’s reputation as a global hub in AI was regularly impressed upon him during his time in South Korea.

“At every single stop that we made, we heard people talk about Canada, AI, ��TV, the Vector Institute – they see Canada as a real leader in AI and they’re very eager to learn,” Fedeli said.

He noted there was a strong desire in South Korea to see more Korean students come to Canada to further their education in STEM fields, including in AI. “They want a bigger influx of Korean students – and we told them, ‘The door’s open,’ because we really believe this is going to help society. We’ve seen some examples of what AI has done and we’re very eager to continue to see the development of AI.”

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Fedeli added that he hoped the high-level meeting would further strengthen the economic relationship between Ontario and South Korea, helping to spark AI advances that give both Ontarian and Korean companies a competitive edge on the global stage.

Held at Simcoe Hall, the meeting included a roundtable discussion titled “AI for the Better Future of Humanity,” that featured AI leaders and luminaries, including Hinton and Lee Jong-ho, the Republic of Korea’s Minister of Science and ICT (information and communication technology).

The talk, moderated by Leah Cowen (pictured below), ��TV’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, also included contributions from Garth Gibson, president and CEO of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Elissa Strome, executive director of Pan-Canadian AI Strategy at CIFAR; and Professor Lisa Austin, chair in law and technology at ��TV’s Faculty of Law and associate director at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Attendees watched demonstrations by ��TV professors and graduate students from the ��TV Robotics Institute, as well as presentations by South Korean companies, including Samsung and LG – both of which have expanded their presence and connections with Toronto and ��TV in recent years – and was also used to announce a new ��TV exchange program with the South Korean government’s Institute for Information & communication Technology Planning & evaluation (IITP).

(Photo by Polina Teif)

On the subject of AI, Hinton said he believes the deep learning revolution is just getting underway and that he expects tremendous growth in the years ahead.

“We now know that if you take a neural net and you just make it bigger and give it more data and more computing power, it’ll work better. So even with no new scientific insights, things are going to improve,” Hinton said during the roundtable discussion. “But we also know there are tens of thousands of brilliant young minds now thinking about how to make these networks better, so there will be many new scientific insights.”

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

In the long-term, Hinton (pictured at the lecturn above) said he envisions a revolution in AI hardware led by advancements in “neuromorphic hardware” – computers and hardware that model artificial neural networks.

“I think Korea may have a big role to play in this,” Hinton said, noting one of the world’s leading experts in this area is Sebastian Seung, Samsung’s president and head of research – who attended the Simcoe Hall event.

When asked to share his thoughts on how Canada achieved its leadership position in AI, Hinton cited three foundational factors: a tolerant, liberal society that encourages leading researchers to settle here; the federal government’s funding for curiosity-driven basic research; and CIFAR’s funding, in 2004, of the Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception program, which is credited with kickstarting the revolution in deep learning.

Following the discussion, event attendees, including ��TV students, watched presentations on avenues for AI research and collaboration by representatives of five South Korean companies: LG, Samsung, Naver, KT (formerly Korea Telecom) and SK Telecom.

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Alex Mihailidis, ��TV’s associate vice-president, international partnerships, then announced that ��TV had signed a memorandum of understanding with IITP, based in Seoul, to launch a bi-national education program in AI.

“We expect that in the fall of 2023, we will be accepting 30 students from Korea who will be going through a custom-made program around AI and its applications,” Mihailidis said. “This is a groundbreaking program that we expect will not only flourish here in Toronto but will grow – hopefully across our two great countries and around the world.”

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Earlier, Mihailidis and President Gertler led President Yoon and Fedeli through four demonstrations showcasing some of the cutting-edge technologies being developed by ��TV professors and their graduate students.

The technologies included: a wearable robotic exoskeleton for walking assistance and rehab demonstrated by Mihailidis and post-doctoral researcher Brokoslaw Laschowski; a sensory soft robotic hand for human-robot interaction demonstrated by Professor Xinyu Liu of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, graduate student Zhanfeng Zhou and post-doctoral researcher Peng Pan; a multimodal perception system for autonomous vehicles showcased by Jiachen (Jason) Zhou, a graduate student in robotics and aerospace engineering; and a nanorobot for precision manipulation under electron microscope that was demonstrated by Yu Sun, professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering and director of the ��TV Robotics Institute.

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Read a story about the visit in the Korea Times

Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton receives prestigious Royal Medal from the Royal Society

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:19:03 +0000

Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton receives prestigious Royal Medal from the Royal Society

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/24/2022 - 09:19

Cutline

(Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Chris Sasaki

Topic

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus

Royal Society

The University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton has been honoured with the Royal Society’s prestigious Royal Medal for his pioneering work in deep learning – a field of artificial intelligence that mimics the way humans acquire certain types of knowledge.

The U.K.’s national academy of sciences said it is recognizing Hinton, a University Professor Emeritus in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, for “pioneering work on algorithms that learn distributed representations in artificial neural networks and their application to speech and vision, leading to a transformation of the international information technology industry.”

It’s the latest in a long list of accolades for Hinton, who is also chief scientific adviser at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a vice-president and engineering fellow at Google. Others include the Association for Computing Machinery’s A. M. Turing Award, widely considered the Nobel Prize of computing.

“It is a great honour to receive the Royal Medal – a medal previously awarded to intellectual giants like Darwin, Faraday, Boole and G.I. Taylor,” Hinton says.

“But unlike them, my success was the result of recruiting and nurturing an extraordinarily talented set of graduate students and post-docs who were responsible for many of the breakthroughs in deep learning that revolutionized artificial intelligence over the last 15 years.”

Royal Medals have been awarded annually since 1826 for advancements in the physical and biological sciences. A third medal – for applied sciences – has been awarded since 1965.

Previous ��TV winners of the Royal Medal include Anthony Pawson and Nobel Prize-winner John Polanyi.

Hinton, meanwhile, has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1998 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1996.

“The Royal Medal is one of the most significant acknowledgements of an individual’s research and career,” says Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. “And Professor Hinton is truly deserving of the distinction – for his foundational research and for the exceptional contribution he’s made toward shaping the modern world and the future. I am thrilled to congratulate him on this award.”

“I want to congratulate Geoff on this spectacular achievement,” adds Eyal de Lara, chair of the department of computer science. “We are very proud of the seminal contributions he has made to the field of computer science, which are fundamentally reshaping our discipline and impacting society at large.”

Deep learning is a type of machine learning that relies on a neural network modelled on the network of neurons in the human brain. In 1986, Hinton and his collaborators developed the breakthrough approach – based on the backpropagation algorithm, a central mechanism by which artificial neural networks learn – that would realize the promise of neural networks and form the current foundation of that technology.

Hinton and his colleagues in Toronto built on that initial work with a number of critical developments that enhanced the potential of AI and helped usher in today’s revolution in deep learning with applications in speech and image recognition, self-driving vehicles, automated diagnosis of images and language, and more.

“I believe that the spectacular recent progress in large language models, image generation and protein structure prediction is evidence that the deep learning revolution has only just started,” Hinton says.

Toronto’s tech boom bolstered by universities, immigration: Netherlands' Het Financieele Dagblad

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 17:40:16 +0000

Toronto’s tech boom bolstered by universities, immigration: Netherlands' Het Financieele Dagblad

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 08/22/2022 - 13:40

Cutline

(Photo by Brxxto via Unsplash)

Topic

Global Lens

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Geoffrey Hinton

Startups

Vector Institute

Toronto has established itself as one of the world’s premier tech hubs, with the University of Toronto making key contributions to an innovation ecosystem that is flush with talent and welcoming to startups and tech giants alike, according to a leading Dutch financial newspaper.

The feature article in Het Financieele Dagblad, or FD, explores the strengths of Toronto’s tech scene and echoes observations made earlier this year by the New York Times. “Many people who have lived in Toronto for years feel a confidence in the city that wasn’t there five or six years ago,” Jon French, director of ��TV Entrepreneurship, tells the paper (according to a translation).

That growing confidence, FD reports, is exemplified by tech entrepreneurs increasingly choosing to stay in Toronto – attracted by the city’s livability, diversity and talent pool – rather than move to Silicon Valley. "When I studied in Toronto, about 10 years ago, there was a perception that you had to go to California or New York to make a career," Nick Frosst, co-founder of AI language processing startup Cohere, told FD. “I hardly hear that myth anymore. Fellow students who have stayed in Canada have built just as good careers as those who left for the U.S.”

FD highlights the seminal contributions of University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton in helping build Toronto’s status as a tech hub, through both his pioneering deep learning research and co-founding of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It also cites the upcoming Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus as an example of how institutions like ��TV are fueling Toronto’s tech boom.

The newspaper also notes how the influx of tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta to Toronto is leading to a “brain gain” as global tech talent pours into the region, aided by Canada’s liberal immigration policies.

Read the feature in FD (registration required, in Dutch)

��TV prof’s AI startup, Deep Genomics, raises US$180 million: The Globe and Mail

wangyana — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 16:20:55 +0000

��TV prof’s AI startup, Deep Genomics, raises US$180 million: The Globe and Mail

wangyana Wed, 07/28/2021 - 12:20

Cutline

��TV Professor Brendan Frey is the founder and CEO of Deep Genomics, which uses machine learning to develop treatments for genetic diseases (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Topic

Breaking Research

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Entrepreneneurship

Innovation & Entrepreneurship