The establishment of a new AI engineering team was announced by the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The team meant to take the not-for-profit’s research and turn it into real-world products.
To support the research and commercialization of AI technologies within Canada, the Toronto-based institute was established in 2017. The creation of an engineering team points to a significant move towards reaching the Vector’s goal. The goal of turning its research into viable applications and solutions for which this decision was taken.
According to Garth Gibson, president, and CEO of Vector, a natural progression of vision is marked by the establishment of the engineering team. The team can help to augment the position as a world-leading AI institute with a focus on responsible AI. The team will accelerate capabilities across multiple sectors.
Institute’s AI research will be used to establish “responsible” industrial AI applications and healthcare initiatives which is a focus of Vector’s engineering team. The creation of reference applications, tools, frameworks, as well as model templates is the task of the team. Industry and health care organizations in Canada are provided “with the know-how and hands-on experience”. It helps to operationalize these models quickly within their respective organizations.
The establishment of “world-class scientific computing infrastructure” will be supported by the engineering team in Vector to scale AI research and adoption. The institute acting on its new three-year strategy is represented by the new Vector team which it released in June. Vector committed to a four-part strategy as part of that strategy. It focuses on becoming a top 10 global center for machine and deep learning.
The expansion of its partnerships with Canadian industry players is a key part of that plan. Since Vector’s launch three years ago, the strategy builds on the foundation established. To increase industry adoption of AI, advance application of AI in health care, bolster Canada’s place as a premier hub of AI talent and research, and support high-level talent development will be built using the foundation of validated programs over the next three years. A portion of the Vector’s efforts on health data is a focus involved in part of the three-year strategy.
To support Ontario’s Pandemic Threat Response (PANTHR) project, it builds off of Vector’s April announcement that it was repurposing its AI computing infrastructure. It was developed by the province to analyze and better detect, plan, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
