Do we Really Want Montreal to be the Silicon Valley of Artificial Intelligence?

For The Economist's special report on Artificial Intelligence (an excellent summary of the state of AI), Tom Standage said, "'It’s the Uber for X' has given way to 'It’s X plus AI' as the default business model for startups."

Montreal has even hopped on the bandwagon and is beginning to position itself as the Silicon Valley of AI. This effort is being led by Yoshua Bengio, a researcher at UdeM and a rockstar in the world of AI.

But it's a lot easier to find people who are scared of it than think it will help us. Elon Musk believes AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes". Even tech giants like Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft et Amazon are all forming an alliance to shape the ethics around the development of AI.

Meanwhile President Obama in his recent guest editing of WIRED says that "Now is the greatest time to be alive" and is much more optimistic on what AI can bring humanity.

And for the rest of us mortal folk, at least we can finally get some help at winning Pictionary.

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Photo: Scott Lynch