A hybrid startup offers AI services to business

BOSSES are more likely to groan than feel giddy about advances in artificial intelligence (AI). They need a strategy, but few companies can hope to own a unit like Google's DeepMind, whose algorithms not only beat the world's best Go players but made a 40% improvement in the energy efficiency of its parent's data centres. A Canadian startup, Element AI, wants to let all businesses tap into the world's best AI minds. The brain behind the new firm is Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer in "deep learning", a branch of AI. As firms such as Google and Facebook lured dozens of AI academics, some in the field expressed fears about a brain drain from academia. Mr Bengio meanwhile stayed at the University of Montreal (though in January he became an adviser to Microsoft).