Geoffrey Hinton kept neural networks alive in Toronto
He moved to Toronto in 1987 and stayed when the field went cold. He shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Read the entry · His students
Written from public sources. Checked Nov 10.
Was Canada really the AI pioneer?
For the research, yes. The methods behind today's AI were kept alive in Toronto and Montréal when most labs had dropped them. Many of the first companies built on that work were sold to US firms.
- 2004
CIFAR, a Canadian research charity, funded Geoffrey Hinton's program on neural networks when few others would.
From CIFAR, its own history page
- 2012
Hinton's Toronto lab won the ImageNet contest with AlexNet. That result started the deep learning boom.
From the University of Toronto and the AlexNet paper
- 2013
Google bought DNNresearch, Hinton's three-person company. It was the first of several Canadian AI firms sold to US companies.
From Google and the University of Toronto
- 2017
Canada became the first country with a national AI strategy. It funded three institutes: Mila, Vector and Amii.
From CIFAR and the Government of Canada
The years
Research and government on top, companies below. Shaded companies were sold to buyers outside Canada.
Research and government
Hinton moves to TorontoUniversity of Toronto Bengio joins the Université de MontréalUniversité de Montréal Sutton joins the University of AlbertaUniversity of Alberta CIFAR backs neural networksCIFAR AlexNet wins ImageNetUniversity of Toronto The first national AI strategyGovernment of Canada Hinton shares the Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize committee Sutton shares the Turing AwardACMCompanies
DNNIts entry
Sold to a buyer outside CanadaIn the index today, with its marksEvery year, 1987 to now
The people
Where each one trained and where each one works now.
Yoshua Bengio built Mila in Montréal and stayed
- Trained
- McGill University
- Now
- Mila, Montréal
Stayed in Canada
2018 Turing Award, shared with Hinton and LeCun
Read the entry
Richard Sutton
- Trained
- UMass Amherst
- Now
- University of Alberta and Amii
Moved to Canada in 2003
Geoffrey Hinton
- Trained
- University of Edinburgh
- Now
- University of Toronto
Worked at Google from 2013 to 2023
Ilya Sutskever
- Trained
- University of Toronto
- Now
- Safe Superintelligence, US
Left Canada
Aidan Gomez
- Trained
- University of Toronto, then a PhD at Oxford
- Now
- Cohere, Toronto
Came back to start a company
Raquel Urtasun
- Trained
- EPFL, Switzerland
- Now
- Waabi, Toronto
Started a company in Canada
Did you know
- Ottawa launched and paid for the 2017 AI strategy, with $125 million in that year's budget. CIFAR, a research charity, led its first phase.
- Hinton, Bengio and LeCun, who shared the 2018 Turing Award, all held CIFAR posts when their field was out of fashion.
- Element AI was one of Montréal's best-funded AI startups before ServiceNow bought it.
- A poker research group at the University of Alberta in Edmonton solved heads-up limit hold'em, a two-player form of poker.
Each line links to its entry and its source.
Places
- MontréalMila
- TorontoVector Institute
- EdmontonAmii
- WaterlooUniversity of Waterloo
- VancouverUBC
Every entry
- AlexNet 2012
- Amii Edmonton
- Yoshua Bengio person
- CIFAR Toronto
- Cohere company
- DNNresearch company
- Element AI company
- Aidan Gomez person
- Geoffrey Hinton person
- Maluuba company
- Mila Montréal
- Pan-Canadian AI Strategy 2017
- Ilya Sutskever person
- Richard Sutton person
- Raquel Urtasun person
- Vector Institute Toronto
- Waabi company