More brains: Microsoft leads hunt to bring global AI experts to Canada

Canada is gearing up for its second wave of brain gains in the hot field of artificial intelligence. The country's global leadership in AI began when deep learning pioneer Geoff Hinton decamped from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for the University of Toronto three decades ago, and this month Canada welcomed two big names from Dr. Hinton's alma mater. This week, Geoff Gordon, one of the top professors at CMU's renowned machine learning department, left his post to lead Microsoft Corp.'s fledgling AI research lab in Montreal, established when the software giant bought local startup Maluuba a year ago. Dr. Gordon expects others to follow him to the hometown of deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, a University of Montreal professor, Microsoft adviser and co-founder of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). "As soon as I've told anybody that I'm becoming research director here, the first or second question they ask is: 'What are the opportunities to come work there?'" Dr. Gordon said, adding he intends to recruit CMU researchers as Microsoft aims to double the number of technical experts at its Montreal AI lab to 75 people within two years.