A Thank you to the Montreal Ecosystem for Supporting AI for Good
It goes without saying that Montreal has emerged as a hub for Artificial Intelligence. In the past two years, there has been over 200 million dollars invested in the ecosystem and over 5 major tech companies that have set up their offices. The rise of AI has created a positive economic impact in Montreal, which has helped forge it into a new identity on an international stage. However, for many, what was still missing from the ecosystem was how we can use AI technology to help those who need it the most. At District 3, we’re all about helping innovative minds achieve positive societal impact.
About a year ago, the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE launched, a four-year, $5 million global competition inviting teams to develop powerful AI-based applications and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with this technology to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. District 3 became the local advocate partner of the competition. Our mission was singular: recruit and support AI teams in Montreal.
I was very familiar with the XPRIZE foundation; I loved their mission and was excited to get started. On a personal note, it was quite the challenge.
Having no real background in AI, beyond my interest in reading articles on the subject and having won 3rd place in an AI competition when I was still an undergraduate student, it was quite a daunting task. Luckily, I was able recruit a great hustler and organizer @giselekarekezi to help. With her onboard, we went about completing the mission.
The first attempts of creating awareness didn’t go so well. Not many people were thinking about solving big global problems in Montreal and no one knew about the AI XPRIZE Competition. Whenever I would present the competition at research labs and meetups, 95% of people did not know that it existed. Many people were also not interested in it, because it was a 3 year competition and required teams to have a longer view. Asking for someone to give up that much time to work on a project is not something that would appeal to everyone.
With the help and guidance of our valued partners, we finally were able to recruit 12 teams to enter the competition. It’s the largest number of participants from any urban center — a fact that positions the city as a leading global contributor of artificial intelligence. Last week, The XPRIZE foundation told us who would make it to the next round.
We are proud to announce that 7 teams in Montreal have made it to the next round of the competition out of 59 entries. We also have 3 teams in the top 10 being from Quebec, and recently Aifred has won second place in the AI XPRIZE’s Milestone competition.
Here is the list of the teams who has made it to the second round
- InnoVie Health: Helping resource-strained hospitals optimize their services to give a better quality care.
- Aifred: A company helping to bring personalized care for the treatment of depression
- Canadian Shield Military and Veteran Student Services: A startup using AI to help Military Veterans transition into civilian life
- Erudite.AI: AI powered chat system to help provide affordable tutoring to those who need it the most.
- Nectar: Analytics to help Beekeepers be better at their jobs as well as minimize the loss of colonies.
- Ubenwa: A low cost AI-powered, diagnostic tool for Birth Asphyxia.
- Mr. Young: A chat bot to help youth manage anxiety.
Also a shout out to WikiNet from Quebec city who is building a system which will provide recommendations on how to handle environmental disasters.
It goes without saying that this would not have been possible without the support of key people in the Montreal ecosystem. Even getting to this point required the help of many stakeholders . I would like to extend a big thank you on behalf of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE teams to the following people:
- Jean-Marc Rousseau of IVADO,
- Myriam Cote, Yoshua Bengio, Laurent Charlin, Ryan Turner and Mathieu Germain of MILA.
- Jean-Francois Gagne, Jeremy Barnes, Phillipe Beaudoin, Nicolas Chapados, Caroline Bourbonnière, Valérie Becaert,
Nicolas Feller, Parmida Atighehchian,
Ousmane of ElementAI - Sylvain Carle and Isaac Souweine of Real Ventures
- Anita Parmar and Ollivier Dyens of the Office of Student Life and Learning at McGill
- Ilias Benjelloun of Desjardins Labs
- Mark Maclean of Montreal International
- Doina Precup and Joelle Pineau of RLL
- Richard Chenier of Centech
- Vaughn Dimarco and Vincent Boucher of Montreal.AI
- Alexis Smirnov of Dialogue
- Andy Mauro of Automat.ai
- Rahul Mehrotra of Maluuba
- Craig Buntin and Cary Goldwax of Sportlogiq
- Raphael Christian-Roy of Front Row Ventures
- Yannick Folla of White Star Capital
- Stephanie Pataracchia of Hacking Health
- The Staff at Blakes Law firm
- Many of the stakeholders and researchers at Concordia University
and many more who I may have forgotten. Without your help, none of this would have been possible.
