Samsung to join other big players, open artificial intelligence research lab in Toronto

Samsung Electronics will open an artificial-intelligence lab in Toronto on Thursday, the latest in a slew of foreign multinationals to set up research operations in Canada. The move is part of a broader push by the South Korean consumer-electronics giant to close the gap with Silicon Valley heavyweights that have snapped up machine-learning talent of late – including many Canadian-trained and Canadian-based researchers. Breakthroughs in image-recognition software by students of pioneering University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton (now a Google employee) early this decade touched off a global race to develop self-teaching technology. "We are coming to [AI] later, so we're playing catch-up," said Larry Heck, co-head of global AI research with Samsung and formerly a research director at Google. "AI in terms of a priority for [Samsung] has risen to the top."