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Ten years after revolutionary Geoffrey Hinton paper, AI headed towards new era of regulation (BETAKIT)
From estimating the likelihood of Kawhi Leonard’s series-winning shot against Philidelphia (it was just 13 percent) to climate change applications and understanding baby cries, AI has become widely disseminated.
Following this evolution, the AI industry finds itself on the precipice of significant change: regulation.
Lucky 13: Raptors analytics department puts a number on Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer beater (THE ATHLETIC)
“Our models say it was a 13-percent shot,” said Keith Boyarsky, the Raptors vice-president of basketball strategy and research.
The shot, in theory, could have been any shot. But Boyarsky was referring to a very specific one. As he was talking at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts Bluma Appel Theatre in downtown Toronto, organizers had just shown the most famous made shot in Raptors history on a big screen behind him. You know the one.
Real Ventures swaps managing partners as firm pauses fundraising (BETAKIT)
Real Ventures is making its second major leadership change in the last two years with co-founder John Stokes taking over as managing partner from Janet Bannister, BetaKit has learned.
Stokes co-founded Real Ventures in 2010, leading the firm’s investments in companies like Unsplash, Transit App, Dcbel, and Wrk. At Real Ventures, Stokes oversaw the development of the FounderFuel accelerator program and establishment of Real Ventures’ presence in Toronto.
The quiet success of Tecton, a $900 million startup, has turned rivals Snowflake and Databricks into co-investors — and fanned a fierce debate over the future of AI (INSIDER)
Both Databricks and Snowflake have invested heavily in real-time data pipelines, including in Tecton's latest funding round. For years, insiders say, real-time data pipelines felt like a technology that was "coming next year." It may turn out that 2022 is that "next year."
Join us at the Metro Toronto Convention Center (MTCC) in Toronto on October 6-7, 2022, to explore AI, Big Data, Cloud, and Cybersecurity.
With more than 250 presentations, 100 exhibiting companies, and 5 000 attendees, Big Data & AI Toronto offers a unique opportunity to learn about the latest trends and network with all Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) professionals in USA and Canada.
AI startup Ada cuts 16 percent of its workforce (BETAKIT)
The majority of the layoffs have impacted marketing, sales, and recruitment within the Canadian unicorn’s team. Murchison said the reductions came in response to a tightening of the economy, and an increased focus in terms of the startup’s new product strategy. However, it wasn’t immediately clear what defines Ada’s new product strategy.
Montreal professor Gilles Brassard’s boundary-pushing work in quantum physics wins world’s largest science prize (THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
In an announcement from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation on Thursday, Prof. Brassard was named a co-winner of the US$3-million award, together with his long-time collaborator, Charles Bennett, a researcher with IBM in the United States. Oxford University physicist David Deutsch and Peter Shor, a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are also co-winners for separate contributions to the field of quantum information.
With new Thrive platform, BDC commits half a billion dollars to invest in Canadian women-led startups and funds (BETAKIT)
BDC first launched the WIT Venture Fund in 2017 to help address the need for direct investment in Canadian early-stage, women-led tech firms and to make indirect investments in women-led funds.
The direct investment fund, which marks the WIT team’s second fund, has been allocated $300 million to back firms at the seed, Series A, and Series B stages.
Deep Tech Funding Slows As ‘Tourist’ Investors Retreat (CRUNCHBASE NEWS)
“I think there were a lot of funds looking for outside returns,” said Avidan Ross, founding partner of Root Ventures, a deep tech early-stage firm with nearly 80 investments. “There were a lot of people chasing [investments] last year.”
IMAX acquires video quality solutions startup SSIMWAVE in $28.3 million CAD deal (BETAKIT)
The transaction comprises $18.5 million in cash and $2.5 million in stock. It also includes an additional earnout consideration of $4 million. A spokesperson for Ssimwave told BetaKit that SSIMWAVE will continue to operate with its current name and branding, now as a subsidiary of IMAX, and will continue to operate independently for the “near term.”
Professor Behind $12 Billion Empire Fuels China’s Tech Rise (BNN BLOOMBERG)
Li Zexiang grew up in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, when capitalists were the enemy. Now the 61-year-old academic has quietly emerged as one of the country’s most successful angel investors, backing more than 60 startups including drone giant DJI.
Startup syllabus: how Dal Innovates embraced innovation education in Atlantic Canada (BETAKIT)
Halifax’s Dalhousie University (“Dal”), through its award-winning program Dal Innovates, is working to provide this education with multiple programs that encourage and support academics considering or otherwise joining the innovation economy.
DeepMind’s new chatbot uses Google searches plus humans to give better answers (MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW)
The trick to making a good AI-powered chatbot might be to have humans tell it how to behave—and force the model to back up its claims using the internet, according to a new paper by Alphabet-owned AI lab DeepMind.
In a new non-peer-reviewed paper out today, the team unveils Sparrow, an AI chatbot that is trained on DeepMind’s large language model Chinchilla.
How to navigate the tangled web of government startup grants (BETAKIT)
Despite billions of dollars in available grants, many startups don’t seek them due to application complexity, confusion in finding them to begin with, or a mix of both.
This is something the Cisco Grants Support Program is working to solve. The Grants Office helps startups of all sizes navigate the grant funding landscape in Canada and apply for relevant grants.
SoftBank Robotics Europe is now Aldebaran (again) (TECHCRUNCH)
Its 2015 acquisition of Aldebaran didn’t go as smoothly as SoftBank hoped. At the time, the French robotics startup was best known for its Nao, which had become a fairly ubiquitous presence in research facilities across the globe. The small humanoid robot formed the foundation for the rebranded SoftBank Robotics’ best-known creation, Pepper. Nao mostly took a backseat as the company pushed to commercialize its new robot.
