This concept lies at the intersection of reinforcement learning, deep generative models and energy-based probabilistic models.

When Microsoft acquired deep learning startup Maluuba in January, Maluuba's highly respected advisor, the deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, agreed to continue advising Microsoft on its artificial intelligence efforts. Bengio, head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, recently visited Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus, and took some time for a chat. Let's start with the basics: What is deep learning? Yoshua Bengio: Deep learning is an approach to machine learning, and machine learning is a way to try to make machines intelligent by allowing computers to learn from examples about the world around us or about some specific aspect of it. Deep learning is particular among all the machine learning methods in that it is inspired by some of the things we know about the brain.

Today is an exciting day for the advancement of AI at Microsoft. We have agreed to acquire Maluuba, a Montreal-based company with one of the world's most impressive deep learning research labs for natural language understanding. Maluuba's expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help us advance our strategy to democratize AI and to make it accessible and valuable to everyone -- consumers, businesses and developers. We've recently set new milestones for speech and image recognition using deep learning techniques, and with this acquisition we are, as Wayne Gretzky would say, skating to where the puck will be next -- machine reading and writing. Maluuba's vision is to advance toward a more general artificial intelligence by creating literate machines that can think, reason and communicate like humans -- a vision exactly in line with ours.

Today is an exciting day for the advancement of AI at Microsoft. We have agreed to acquire Maluuba, a Montreal-based company with one of the world's most impressive deep learning research labs for natural language understanding. Maluuba's expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help us advance our strategy to democratize AI and to make it accessible and valuable to everyone -- consumers, businesses and developers. We've recently set new milestones for speech and image recognition using deep learning techniques, and with this acquisition we are, as Wayne Gretzky would say, skating to where the puck will be next -- machine reading and writing. Maluuba's vision is to advance toward a more general artificial intelligence by creating literate machines that can think, reason and communicate like humans -- a vision exactly in line with ours.

Yoshua Bengio, one of the leading figures behind the rise of deep learning, is launching a Silicon Valley-style startup incubator dedicated to this enormously influential form of artificial intelligence. The incubator, Element AI, will help build companies from AI research that emerges from the University of Montreal, where Bengio is a professor, and nearby McGill University, and he says this is just part of his efforts to develop an "AI ecosystem" in Montreal. Bengio says the Canadian city offers "the biggest concentration in the world" of academic researchers exploring deep learning, the breed of AI that now plays such an important role inside the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. "Element AI will help entrepreneurs get started in that high-growth area, with a team of experts--and my help--to steer those companies in the right direction," he says. According to Bengio, about 100 researchers are exploring deep learning at the University of Montreal and about 50 others are doing similar work at McGill.

Update: Though Yoshua Bengio originally referred to his incubator as Element.AI, the official name is now Element AI.

Yoshua Bengio, one of the leading figures behind the rise of deep learning, is launching a Silicon Valley-style startup incubator dedicated to this enormously influential form of artificial intelligence. The incubator, Element AI, will help build companies from AI research that emerges from the University of Montreal, where Bengio is a professor, and nearby McGill University, and he says this is just part of his efforts to develop an "AI ecosystem" in Montreal. Bengio says the Canadian city offers "the biggest concentration in the world" of academic researchers exploring deep learning, the breed of AI that now plays such an important role inside the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. "Element AI will help entrepreneurs get started in that high-growth area, with a team of experts--and my help--to steer those companies in the right direction," he says. According to Bengio, about 100 researchers are exploring deep learning at the University of Montreal and about 50 others are doing similar work at McGill.

Yoshua Bengio, one of the leading figures behind the rise of deep learning, is launching a Silicon Valley-style startup incubator dedicated to this enormously influential form of artificial intelligence. The incubator, Element.AI, will help build companies from AI research that emerges from the University of Montreal, where Bengio is a professor, and nearby McGill University, and he says this is just part of his efforts to develop an "AI ecosystem" in Montreal. Bengio says the Canadian city offers "the biggest concentration in the world" of academic researchers exploring deep learning, the breed of AI that now plays such an important role inside the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. "Element.AI will help entrepreneurs get started in that high-growth area, with a team of experts--and my help--to steer those companies in the right direction," he says. According to Bengio, about 100 researchers are exploring deep learning at the University of Montreal and about 50 others are doing similar work at McGill.