Over the course of the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become recognized as one of the keys to solving some of the world's most complex issues, unlocking a level of growth and innovation that has never been seen before. Governments across the globe are now shifting gear, actively designing investment approaches, incentives and discussing regulatory frameworks to help their nations maintain a top spot in this emerging industry. And much like global counterparts, Canadian policy makers and industries are grappling with the challenge of regulating without stifling innovation. AI was a central focus at the 2017 annual business of AI conference hosted by Rotman's Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a Canadian accelerator that builds AI-powered startups. At the conference, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the following about AI: "Let's be part of it and help shape it, and let's make sure we're benefiting from the innovations – in both the designing of them and the applications and the jobs." Let's remember this isn't just a gender issue, we need to think broader and ensure our machines are learning about ethnicity, race, language, skin colour, and age.

TORONTO, March 22, 2017 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada is funding a Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy for research and talent that will cement Canada's position as a world leader in AI. The $125 million strategy will attract and retain top academic talent in Canada, increase the number of post-graduate trainees and researchers studying artificial intelligence, and promote collaboration between Canada's main centres of expertise in Montreal, Toronto-Waterloo and Edmonton. The program will be administered through CIFAR, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The new program was announced in the federal budget released on Wednesday. "The Canadian government clearly recognizes the importance of artificial intelligence as a platform technology that cuts across many areas of innovation today," says Dr. Alan Bernstein, President and CEO of CIFAR.

In Budget 2017 the Government of Canada announced it will renew and enhance its funding for CIFAR, investing $35 million over the next five years in CIFAR's mission of enabling transformative knowledge by catalyzing global networks of the world's pre-eminent researchers. The government also announced that CIFAR will administer a $125 million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy for research and talent. "I want to thank the Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains, and the government of Canada for this support," says CIFAR President and CEO Dr. Alan Bernstein. "This government understands the importance of investing in fundamental research, and they understand that the CIFAR model of bringing together some of the best minds to address important global questions benefits both Canada and the world. I'd especially like to thank the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Canada's Minister of Science, for her strong on-going support for CIFAR."

For the last eight months, I have spent a lot of time trying to absorb as much as I can about machine learning. I am constantly amazed at the variety of people I meet on online MOOCs in this small but quickly growing community, from quantum researchers at Fermilab to Tesla-driving Silicon Valley CEOs. Lately, I have been putting a lot of my focus into the open source software TensorFlow, and this tutorial is the result of that. I feel like a lot of machine learning tutorials are geared toward Mac. One major advantage of using Linux is it's free and it supports using TensorFlow with your GPU.