The use artificial intelligence (AI) is exploding across the planet as it evolves into an essential tool for a myriad of fields and industries. But to successfully implement the technology into business operations, IT leaders need to surround themselves with global experts while building a state-of-the-art ecosystem. The place to start looking for such experts in Canada is Québec, the nation's AI powerhouse. Seventh in the world – that's where the province ranks in the Global AI Index published by the British firm Tortoise Media, a ranking of the most competitive countries in AI. Canada overall comes in fourth place – a remarkable achievement of which Québec is a real driving force.

When we talk about the benefit of diversity to our society, we often speak in general terms. But spend time with the entrepreneurs fueling the remarkable surge in artificial-intelligence (AI) research and development now taking place in Toronto, and the benefits of diversity become apparent in concrete form. At a recent University of Toronto Rotman School of Management event showcasing business opportunities associated with the latest advances in AI, I saw venture demos from dozens of promising startups, all amid a crowd that was strikingly diverse even by Toronto standards. These things are awkward to quantify. But here's a random sequence of attendee surnames based on a scan of ID cards at the reception desk: Adejuwon, Ehrsam, Conde, Pal, Lepshokova, Dhamani, Kurian, Ing, MacGregor.

The robotics market is growing at an unprecedented pace and vague worries about job loss due to automation--however misguided--often take shape in visions of robots replacing individual workers on production lines. However, there's a much less tangible form of automation that's poised to make an even bigger impact on manufacturing in the near future: artificial intelligence (AI). The concept is notoriously difficult to pin down. "I would say it's as difficult to define as intelligence itself," noted Philippe Beaudoin, SVP research at Element AI. But for manufacturers, what matters most is what AI can do.

There is an ardent group who believe that the written word -- handwritten, texted, printed, keyboarded -- is on its way out. For years, voice recognition was mainly a novelty for nerds or a pain-in-the-neck substitute for people unable to type. That's changed, and fast -- even in the three short years since Apple unleashed Siri onto a gazillion iPhones. Dictation software is more accurate, yes, but it's more than that. Advances in natural language processing, which can understand the meaning of the words and recognize habits of speech, have given rise to brave new possibilities for the spoken word-- like the Internet of Things and identification by speech recognition.