Tech giants rush to invest in Montreal artificial intelligence research lab

MONTREAL - Artificial intelligence, once relegated to the realm of science fiction, is now found in everything from translation services to virtual assistants to video games. And as companies race to develop self-driving cars and offer increasingly personalized online experiences, they're building on research that was largely pioneered by a group of Canadian researchers who are still attracting plenty of attention and investment dollars. Montreal, in particular, has developed a concentration of expertise in the area of AI, largely thanks to the efforts of Universite de Montreal professor Yoshua Bengio, head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). "(AI) will affect pretty much every economic sector; right now is just the tip of the iceberg," Bengio told The Canadian Press. "One of the things we are going to see more of is how these technologies affect how we interact with computers."