The tech world's love affair with artificial intelligence is interesting to watch if only for the steps that companies are willing to take to advance their respective technologies. This is recently demonstrated in how Yoshua Bengio was able to lead Microsoft in a merry chase that ended in Montreal after the company acquired a startup he was a part of.
Redmond has completed the deal to acquire Maluuba, the AI startup that Bengio has been deeply involved in. As a result, he is now employed in Microsoft as an advisor, a position that he also held at Maluuba.
Microsoft Chases After AI Expert
Microsoft had already been setting its sights on Bengio, who also leads the University of Montreal's Institute for Learning Algorithms. He previously co-founded a startup called Element AI and Microsoft has promptly secured a stake in that company. The move seems to have failed to impress Bengio so it did not lead to his employment.
Looking at his recent works, it appears that Bengio has been focused on developing talents in the AI field. According to Fortune, his presence in Montreal is largely responsible for the way it is presently blossoming as an AI hub.
It was not made officially clear if he will be working as an advisor within the Maluuba team if it will be retained or if he will now work within Microsoft's AI division. Fortunately, the company has shed some light in this area.
"Yoshua Bengio, one of the world's foremost experts in deep learning ... will also be advising Microsoft and interacting directly with me," Harry Shum, executive vice president at Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research Group explained in a blog post. "As an admirer of Yoshua's work from a distance, I'm really looking forward to this opportunity to work more closely with him and to benefit from his deep learning systems expertise."
Maluuba AI Technology
To be fair, Bengio is not the only reason why Maluuba has been acquired. The company is considered one of the pioneers in deep learning for natural language processing. Its takeover means that Microsoft will gain crucial technologies particularly those in the areas of speech and image recognition.
It is worth noting that the company has successfully demonstrated an AI system last year that has beaten equivalent technologies built by Google and Facebook.
"Maluuba's vision is to advance toward a more general artificial intelligence by creating literate machines that can think, reason and communicate like humans — a vision exactly in line with ours," Shum said.
