Canada has been investing in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for longer than most of the industrialized world. Dr. Geoff Hinton of Google helped ignite the field of graphics processing unit (GPU) deep learning at the University of Toronto. Then he became chief scientific advisor to the Vector Institute, which in collaboration with the University, aims to produce the largest number of deep learning AI graduates and innovators globally. It's the home of computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who is another pioneer of AI technology. Hundreds of AI researchers and doctoral students are concentrated at McGill University and the University of Montreal.

Last year the annual artificial intelligence conference NeurIPS invited 230 researchers from Africa to attend a "Black in AI" workshop in Montreal. It was a great opportunity to bring some diversity to the field of AI. Sadly, however, the Canadian government denied visas for about a third of the Africans invited to the workshop. Many others were unable to attend because the Canadian government took too long to process their visas. The Partnership on AI--a group founded by Amazon, Facebook, Google's DeepMind subsidiary, Microsoft, and IBM--contends that these sorts of visa issues are a threat to the development of AI.

At the perfect intersection of technology and civil service, every government process will be an automated one, streamlining benefits, outcomes, and applications for every citizen within a digitally-enabled country. With that approach comes a significant layer of protocol that is necessary to ensure citizens feel empowered regarding decision-making processes and how their government addresses needs from a digital perspective. Right now, Canada is leading the world in AI, thanks largely to huge government investments like the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The growing field is pervasive right now--there is hardly an industry it has not disrupted, from mining to legal aid. In fact, government might be one of the most obvious choices as to where automated decision processes can save time and money.

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic technology. It is now being applied throughout the healthcare arena from imaging to triaging patients. But outside of the mainstream hospital uses the technology is also be deployed in apps, wearables and trackers. Here is five of the cutting edge ways AI is being used by health professionals today. One problem that innovators are looking to tackle with AI is paperwork.

The first genuinely impressive AI assistant may well have a Canadian accent. Facebook announced today that it is tapping into Canada's impressive supply of artificial-intelligence talent and expertise by creating a major AI research center in Montreal. Several big recent advances in AI can be traced back to Canadian research labs, and Facebook is hoping that the new lab may help it take advantage of whatever comes next. The new center will focus, in particular, on an area of AI known as reinforcement learning (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Reinforcement Learning"). The center will seek to apply this and other novel approaches to language, with the aim of producing more coherent and useful virtual assistants, says Yann LeCun, director of AI research at Facebook.

Video shows how narwhals use their iconic tusks to hunt fish. Filmed near Nunavut, Canada, a narwhal can be seen tapping a fish with its tusk. The unicorn of the sea just got a little less mysterious. Until now, how narwhals used their long tusks had been subject to much speculation by scientists. Behavior captured for the first time on camera shows narwhals using the long tusks protruding from their heads to stun Arctic cod by hitting them, using jagged, quick movements.

Long before Google started working on cars that drive themselves and Amazon was creating home appliances that talk, a handful of researchers in Canada -- backed by the Canadian government and universities -- were laying the groundwork for today's boom in artificial intelligence. But the center of the commercial gold rush has been a long way away, in Silicon Valley. In recent years, many of Canada's young A.I. scientists, lured by lucrative paydays from Google, Facebook, Apple and other companies, have departed. Canada is producing a growing number of A.I start-ups, but they often head to California, where venture capital, business skills and optimism are abundant. "Canada is not really reaping the benefits from this A.I. technical leadership and decades of investment by the Canadian government," said Tiff Macklem, former senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, who is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

TOKYO Toshiba Corp will likely miss a third deadline to report its quarterly business results, two sources told Reuters, forcing the Japanese conglomerate to ask for a fresh extension or face a possible delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Once limited to the realm of fiction, AI is now the technology shaping our world more than ever before. Montreal is at the center of this movement, with some saying it could become the Silicon Valley of AI. This may come as a surprise with all the other tech research and startup hubs out there. What does Montreal have that they don't? As it turns out, the largest concentration of independent AI researchers in the world.