Nvidia is best known for its graphics cards, but the company conducts some serious research into artificial intelligence, too. For its latest project, Nvidia researchers taught an AI system to recreate the game of Pac-Man simply by watching it being played. There's no coding involved, no pre-rendered images for the software to draw on. The AI model is simply fed visual data of the game in action along with the accompanying controller inputs and then recreates it frame by frame from this information. The resulting game is playable by humans, and Nvidia says it will be releasing it online in the near future.

James Cameron's 3-D film Avatar sought to revolutionize the movie-going experience when it was first released in 2009, creating an immersive world for viewers. But what if you also wanted to feel the heat and the wind, while flying on a banshee, direct from your cinema seat? While a small number of so-called "4-D" movies that add a physical element already exist, researchers from the University of Toronto are working on a way to apply the feature more broadly. "Usually the chair will shake, there can be splashing or some other kind of interaction while watching the film," says Yuhao Zhou, a fourth-year undergraduate in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical & computer engineering, of the emerging entertainment. "Right now all these effects are created from the first phase of production. We'd like to automate this kind of process for movies that were not originally created for 4-D cinemas."

Silicon Valley computer chip giant NVIDIA Corp. on Wednesday became the latest foreign tech giant to establish an artificial intelligence lab in Canada, hiring University of Toronto computer science assistant professor Sanja Fidler to lead the effort. The company, which has about one-quarter of its 50 downtown Toronto employees focused on AI, plans to at least double the size of its operation, with most of the new hires tasked "to work specifically on pie-in-the-sky kinds of AI research," said Rev Lebaredian, an NVIDIA vice president. Ms. Fidler, a Slovenian-born academic, will devote about half her time to NVIDIA and the balance to supervising graduate students at U of T, where she has gained a reputation as one of the bright lights of the computer science department, winning several research and faculty awards, including a nod as professor of the year in 2014-15 from the faculty's student union. She also gained notoriety along with fellow U of T researchers for using AI to help people determine if their outfits were stylish and also to generate Christmas songs based on computer analysis of holiday images. Ms. Fidler was not available for an interview. NVIDIA, best known as a graphics processing powerhouse in the computer gaming industry, was one of the earliest Silicon Valley companies to shift its business to serve the burgeoning AI industry, providing a platform and tools to serve the market for self-driving cars, autonomous robots and super-computing applications.

Toronto is a thriving hub for AI experts, thanks in part to foundational work out of the University of Toronto and government-supported research organizations like the Vector Institute. We're tapping further into this expertise by investing in a new AI research lab -- led by leading computer scientist Sanja Fidler -- that will become the focal point of our presence in the city. NVIDIA's Toronto office opened in 2015, leveraging our acquisition of TransGaming, a game-technology company, and currently numbers about 50. With the new lab, our goal is to triple the number of AI and deep learning researchers working there by year's end. It will be a state-of-art facility for AI talent to work in and will expand the footprint of our office by about half to accommodate the influx of talent.

Brace yourself for one you haven't heard before--a huge name in the technology industry is opening up an AI centre in Canada. To be more specific, Toronto--and that massive name is NVIDIA who today announced a brand new AI research lab to accompany the tech company's office that opened in 2015 after acquiring TransGaming. Sanja Fidler will lead NVIDIA's Toronto lab, drawing form her expertise in computer science as a professor at the University of Toronto. Fidler is also a member of the Vector Institute, which NVIDIA name-dropped in their announcement as reasoning for Toronto becoming a thriving AI hub. Fidler's main research goals involve deep learning and computer vision, with a bit of natural language processing thrown in.

A future with highways full of self-driving cars or robot friends that can actually hold a decent conversation may not be far away. That's because we're living in the middle of an "artificial intelligence boom" -- a time when machines are becoming more and more like the human brain. That's partly because of an emerging subcategory of AI called "deep learning." It's a process that's often trying to mimic the human brain's neocortex, which helps humans with language processing, sensory perception and other functions. Essentially, deep learning is when machines figure out how to recognize objects.

A Pew Research Foundation study examining the future of work and job training found a belief among some experts that artificial intelligence and automation threaten not just millions of jobs, but also the future of capitalism. Released Wednesday, the non-scientific study titled "The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training" is the seventh in an eight-part "Future of the Internet" study being conducted by the Pew Research Center and Elon University. More than 1,400 AI researchers, tech experts, professors, startup CEOs, and members of the general public responded to the survey. Respondents include leaders from companies like Google and Microsoft and educators from MIT, Harvard, and other universities, as well as a mix of other people interested in AI and the future of work. Tech experts include computer scientists and AI researchers but also people from internet governance groups, futurists, and startup founders.

Various estimates suggest the American employment mill could shrink by 30% by the year 2025. The United Nations' assessment is even grimmer. They project two-thirds of the human workforce will be replaced in the next decade. Usually, the major sectors included in these loss reports are manufacturing, retail, and blue collar jobs. However, a new analysis suggests white collar jobs are not immune, and now the world's largest hedge fund is replacing its managers with artificial intelligence. The firm Bridgewater Associates, which manages $160 billion worth of assets, tasked a team of its engineers with creating AI software that can automate decision-making and eliminate emotion from financial analysis.

A computer software algorithm will decide the day-to-day management at Bridgewater Associates LP, the world's largest hedge-fund firm. The global labour force is being replaced and managed by artificial intelligence and robotic automation. Various estimates suggest the American employment mill could shrink by 30% by the year 2025. They project two-thirds of the human workforce will be replaced in the next decade. Usually, the major sectors included in these loss reports are manufacturing, retail, and blue collar jobs.