Three years ago, a Georgia Tech study uncovered a major flaw in self-driving vehicles: they find it much harder to see darker-skinned pedestrians. The researchers were testing how accurately the vehicles' artificial intelligence–based object detection models noticed pedestrians of different races. But no matter what variables they changed -- how big the person was in the image, whether they were partially blocked, what time of day it was -- the imbalance remained, raising fears that in real-life applications, racialized people could be at higher risk of being hit by a self-driving car. It's just one of far too many examples showing how AI can be biased and, as a result, harm already-marginalized groups. "Think of something like melanoma detection," says Shingai Manjengwa, director of technical education at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Since 2016, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has focused on AI through its dedicated research division called Borealis AI. In October 2020, Borealis AI and RBC announced the launch of Aiden, an AI-driven electronic trading platform for institutional investors. Aiden uses "reinforcement learning," a form of AI based on behavioural psychology that either rewards or penalizes an algorithm when it makes a decision. This is the same type of machine learning used for AlphaGo, a Google-owned computer program that beat a human player at Go, a sophisticated board game, in 2016. But making trading decisions in a live market is more complicated than playing a board game, noted Foteini Agrafioti, chief science officer at RBC and head of Borealis AI. "It's a much more complex environment where we were able to deploy [Aiden] and we're extremely happy with the results," she said.

For a computer science professor, Greg Mori doesn't spend nearly as much time staring at a computer as one might think. "A lot of what I do is talk to people," said the director of Simon Fraser University's School of Computing Science. It's fitting, then, that he's using both his human and his computer skills for his next venture: making computers see and perceive the world as humans do. Mori is leading the latest artificial intelligence lab within a network of cross-Canada AI labs that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) research institute Borealis AI is operating. The lab, announced by the big bank late last month, will be housed in a downtown Vancouver facility where researchers will be tackling fairness, privacy and bias in AI in addition to its mandate for computer vision. Mori said this holistic approach of Borealis AI helped entice him to join.

Canada's largest bank is joining global tech giants in setting up a research lab in Montreal to take advantage of the city's growing artificial intelligence expertise. The Royal Bank of Canada will open a Borealis AI lab in the new year, joining labs in Toronto and Edmonton. It hopes to have 10 researchers on staff in the first year of operation. RBC will join Silicon Valley tech heavyweights like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, along with Samsung and other global players that have made a presence in the city. "(Montreal) is absolutely one of the hottest places not only in Canada but on earth right now," says Foteini Agrafioti, RBC chief science officer and Borealis AI head.

"This is a machine watching the world in real time and making sense of it all over the world," explains Foteini Agrafioti, the head of the RBC Institute. Still despite the advent of such technologies, Agrafioti says she feels the notion of intelligent robots replacing humans is overhyped – for now. Out of Toronto towards the Ontario city of Kitchener, a company is already building the AI-equipped robots which can easily perform tasks currently undertaken by humans. Even if the robotic secretary is out of action when we arrive, on its shop floor hulking self-driving machines move about performing tasks entirely by their own volition.

Canadian researchers have been behind some recent major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Now, the country is betting on becoming a big player in one of the hottest fields in technology, with help from the likes of Google and RBC. In an unassuming building on the University of Toronto's downtown campus, Geoff Hinton laboured for years on the "lunatic fringe" of academia and artificial intelligence, pursuing research in an area of AI called neural networks. Also known as "deep learning", neural networks are computer programs that learn in a similar way to human brains. The field showed early promise in the 1980s, but the tech sector turned its attention to other AI methods after that promise seemed slow to develop.

Canadian researchers have been behind some recent major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Now, the country is betting on becoming a big player in one of the hottest fields in technology, with help from the likes of Google and RBC. In an unassuming building on the University of Toronto's downtown campus, Geoff Hinton laboured for years on the "lunatic fringe" of academia and artificial intelligence, pursuing research in an area of AI called neural networks. Also known as "deep learning", neural networks are computer programs that learn in similar way to human brains. The field showed early promise in the 1980s, but the tech sector turned its attention to other AI methods after that promise seemed slow to develop.

If you use your credit card to buy a latte in Vancouver and a couple of minutes later that card is making a purchase in Singapore, that's a red flag for fraud. But increasingly sophisticated fraud calls for more sophisticated measures to deal with it, and that is among the challenges behind RBC Research's announcement today that it is launching a new lab to explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial sector. Richard Sutton, a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, has been named head academic advisor to RBC Research in machine learning. The new lab will work with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute at the University of Alberta, where Sutton is a professor. Foteini Agrafioti, head of RBC Research, which was launched last fall in Toronto, said the announcement will help her organization to play a major role in advancing AI research in the future of banking. Agrafioti said that as the complexity of fraud evolves over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to detect it.

A pioneer in machine learning from the University of Alberta is teaming up with the Royal Bank of Canada on artificial intelligence research. Richard Sutton, a professor at the school's department of computer science and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, will advise the bank's machine learning research division and collaborate with RBC's second AI research lab, to be located in Edmonton. Sutton specializes in the same branch of machine learning that Google's AlphaGo computer program used, in part, to beat one of the highest-ranking professional players of the board game Go -- until recently, a notoriously difficult game for computers to play. The announcement is the latest in a string of AI-related partnerships, acquisitions and investments that have been struck in Canada in recent months -- the most high-profile of which have involved Facebook and Google, which have been in a fierce competition for access to talent. For over three decades, Sutton has specialized in reinforcement learning. In this branch of machine learning, an algorithm is designed to receive either a reward or penalty based on its behaviour, and learns to make choices that will result in the most reward -- and, hopefully, most desired behaviour -- over time.

TORONTO, Oct. 20, 2016 /CNW/ - RBC today announced two new initiatives in collaboration with the University of Toronto designed to ensure Canada remains a leading centre of development in machine learning and artificial intelligence. RBC Research in Machine Learning will be a state-of-the-art research practice working to push the boundaries of the science around machine learning. RBC is also partnering with the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, becoming a Founding Partner of the Lab's Machine Learning Initiative focused on artificial intelligence-enabled companies. "RBC Research in Machine Learning is part of our commitment to the advancement of machine learning and artificial intelligence in Canada," says Gabriel Woo, vice-president of innovation at RBC. "We are not only building our own capabilities, we're also big believers in creating jobs in this space to retain the amazing talent we have in Canada. RBC Research in Machine Learning will be housed at the Banting Institute at the University of Toronto, and will be headed up by successful inventor and entrepreneur Dr. Foteini Agrafioti. Dr. Agrafioti is the co-founder and co-inventor of Nymi, the first wearable device to authenticate users using the biometric technology HeartID. "This has really never been done before in Canada," says Dr. Agrafioti, who was named "Inventor of the Year" in 2012 by the University of Toronto for inventing HeartID. "We've lost so much talent in this country to other companies and institutions, but RBC has both the scale and commitment to ensure Canada remains a centre of excellence in machine learning." Under the leadership of Dr. Agrafioti, the RBC Research in Machine Learning team will collaborate with academics from the University of Toronto and other institutions, publishing new research in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. They will also be connected to the teams within the bank working on artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide expertise and help solve business challenges. RBC also extends its close collaboration with the University of Toronto through a new partnership with the Creative Destruction Lab, a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies. The Lab employs an objectives-based mentoring process led by highly accomplished entrepreneurs and angel investors with the goal of maximizing the equity value creation of its ventures. As part of the agreement, RBC is contributing to the Creative Destructions Lab's programming fund and will assume a role on the Lab's Advisory board. "We're thrilled to partner with RBC on this initiative," says Rachel Harris, director of The Creative Destruction Lab. "With their support we are able to scale our program.