Microsoft Corp. is bolstering its Canadian artificial intelligence presence in Montreal, adding a former Spotify researcher to lead the tech giant’s ethical AI group.
Fernando Diaz will join Microsoft’s growing AI office in Montreal as a principal researcher and lead the company’s Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI, the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant announced Friday.
“I’ve been doing AI research for a long time and one of the things I’ve known for a while is the strength of AI in Montreal,” said Diaz in an interview with BNN Bloomberg. “There’s a long tradition of research in the city and it’s starting to blossom these days.”
Diaz previously was a director of research at music streaming company Spotify in New York, where he specialized in information retrieval and machine learning. Prior to Spotify, he was a senior researcher and founding member at Microsoft’s New York research office.
At Microsoft, Diaz will focus on exploring how artificial intelligence can improve internet searching, and to better understand the potentially adverse impacts it could have on society.
“For example, can I understand how [Microsoft’s] Bing is working for certain demographics in my user base,” Diaz said. “If there is, then there’s a sign of some bias in the algorithm and that we should try to remedy it.”
Diaz’s hire comes at a pivotal moment for Canada’s burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, which has grown in recent years thanks to the publication of critical research developed in Toronto and Montreal.
Microsoft Corp. acquired Maluuba, an AI startup based in Montreal and Waterloo, Ont., in 2017 for an undisclosed sum. That office established the company’s research lab in Montreal, which hired renowned artificial intelligence expert, Geoffrey Gordon, to be its new research director and is set to expand to about 75 staff. Microsoft’s venture fund took a stake in Element AI, a Montreal-based startup, in 2016.
In March 2017 the Canadian government spent $125 million to develop AI research centres in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton – all cities with top universities that specialize in the technology. Some of that funding was earmarked for the Vector Institute, a Toronto-based organization based in the MaRS tech hub that aims to lure some of the world’s top AI researchers.
Montreal is also home to several AI research centres established by some of the world’s biggest tech companies. Alphabet Inc.’s Google opened an AI research lab in the city in 2016, followed by Facebook Inc. and Samsung Corp. a year later. Google also invested $4.5 million in grant funding in 2016 for the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, an academic lab based at the University of Montreal that focuses on machine learning.
“I think Canada is punching exactly at its weight class, even if some may perceive Canada to be an underdog in AI,” Diaz, a native of America, said. “I think Canada has been very strong in these areas and with a lot of these government initiatives, it will get stronger [in AI].”
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