Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence ensures the world gets more Canada

In his introduction, Jacobs offers a brief history of Canada's pioneering contribution to the field of artificial intelligence (AI), explaining the significance of the shift between rules-based AI and machine learning that originated in Ontario. "Forty years ago, the prevalent form of AI involved programmers using IF/THEN statements to teach machines," Jacobs explains. "Then there were these outliers who believed that, 'no, you're not going to program anything, the machine is going to figure it out itself, and it's going to do this by using artificial neurons that mimic how the brain works.' The leader of that group was someone named Geoffrey Hinton, and for most of his career, people said that he was crazy…They couldn't really get any funding except for a couple small research organizations in Canada, including CIFAR." The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) that Jacobs refers to, approved its first program, Artificial Intelligence & Robotics in 1982, while operating out of an Ontario government office just a few blocks from where Jacobs is sitting, and later recruited Geoffrey Hinton to Toronto.