Welcome to our October 2021 monthly digest where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, get the low-down on recent events, and much more. In this edition we cover our latest focus issue, the concept of foundation models, 100 days of machine learning, Beethoven's 10th symphony, and more. Our latest focus series life on land (as part of our wider series on the UN sustainable development goals) was launched this month. We spoke to Lily Xu about her work in green security. Lily and her colleagues apply machine learning and game theory techniques to wildlife conservation.

HANSON: They've had a chequered past, I'll give you that. The Egyptians seemed to be confusing them for some kind of Gods at some point.

The CIFAR deep learning summer school in Toronto has been training the top AI researchers entering or finishing Ph.D. programs since 2005. Over 1,200 students from 60 different countries applied, of which 200 were selected to attend. Attendees represent some of the leading AI labs in the world, Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (MILA), University College London, University of Toronto, University of Alberta, Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, CMU, MIT, ETH Zurich, and Stanford. Every year, the school has trained the next generation of top AI researchers which now hold top posts at AI companies like Google, Facebook, Tesla, and Uber. During an intense 10-day period, students learn the tricks of the trade from top AI researchers like deep learning pioneers Yoshua Bengio (MILA), Geoff Hinton (UofT), and reinforcement learning pioneer, Richard Sutton (University of Alberta, Google Deepmind).

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.

What does it mean to be intelligent? Why do humans perceive their environment the way they do? These are all questions that artificial intelligence will, over time, help scientists answer about the human experience. And Richard Sutton, a professor of computer sciences at the University of Alberta, has been a significant contributor to the discussion around the limits and promise of artificial intelligence. He is a respected voice on "reinforcement learning," or the fundamental process that allows AI software to respond to (and ultimately learn from) its environment.

Dr. Richard Sutton presents "The Future of Artificial Intelligence" in the Technology and Future of Medicine course LABMP 590 http://www.singularitycourse.com This video has the greatest potential to save the world, and improve everyone's preparation for the future and improve the actual future itself, of any videos we have produced to date. If you do not want to watch the whole thing from the beginning, watch from 00:27:24 The Enslavement Problem. This is from the September 10th, 2015 lecture in eHub at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Dr. Kim Solez gave a poetry reading on subjects related to this lecture at the Strathearn Art Walk on September 12, 2015, with Dr. Sutton in the audience and commenting afterward see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v jTVO7... .