Greg Coulombe

I'm excited that this week at the CAIAC - Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association conference George Wang will be presenting a paper Adaptive Learning Rates for Gradient Boosting Trees, based on work he did as an intern at Kinaxis last fall, in collaboration with Christopher Wang, Yunfei O., Behrouz Soleimani, PhD. There are 3 reasons this is both impressive and cool: 1. They combine heuristics, machine learning, and optimization to speed up the training for an important algorithm, Gradient Boosted Machines, widely used in both academia and industry. Faster training improves model performance. 2. This paper is just one of the many sparks of innovation in #artificialintelligence coming out of Kinaxis, where > 50% of our patents filed in the last several years have been in this space, because we continue to push the boundaries by inventing new solutions like this one to solve problems our customers face. We've been delivering AI to the market since 2018 and were the first to provide solutions powered by AI to address both demand and supply. We are rooted in Canada, which brought the world out of the last AI winter in 2012 when a team from the University of Toronto won the famous Imagenet competition by blowing the lid off previous results. Their submission was layers of neural networks called deep learning, which later became the foundation for the #generativeAI revolution we are seeing today. 3. We have an outstanding intern program in #machinelearning at Kinaxis, where interns work on real problems, guided by senior staff. As a testament to letting the students shine, when their paper was accepted they decided to have George present it. So check out the paper if you're at the conference, but if you miss the event you can't miss the fact that we are actively speaking and sparking on AI. In fact, just last week Chantal Bisson-Krol spoke in Edmonton at the #upperbound conference on AI-Powered Strategies for Resilient Supply Chains and I spoke at the Reuters Supply Chain USA event on Embedding AI in supply chain to deliver end-to-end value.

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Check out this great article about RAGE, our latest research innovation that helps explain LLMs!

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The #quantum #computing industry is both fascinating and complex, but more importantly, it is a critical and rapidly growing industry that is really set to be the source and driver of innovation across for a number of technologies (both existing and those that have yet to be created). If, like me, you've also gone down fascinating rabbit holes on better understanding quantum computing, I think you'll really enjoy the below event, put on by CDL-Rockies, Voyager Capital, Quantum City and Platform Calgary and sponsored by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. It will be a really fresh take on how quantum computing technologies are being used, what building a business in this space looks like and where the industry is heading. Check it out and I'll see you there! Heather Marshall, MBA Alice Reimer Austin Guyette Megan Lee Jennifer Lussier Taylor Clapp Karam-Ali Talakshi Essmaa Kachour #EHGYYC #founders #venturecapital #startups #scaleups #growthcompanies #investors #quantum #quantumcity #CDL #voyagercapital

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What would you do with an extra 19 hours a week? That’s how much time doctors spend on administrative tasks, according to the Ontario Medical Association. Thanks to AI Scribe, what once took 4 hours/week to write up patient visit notes, can now be done in minutes. Now think about your own daily grind. How much time is spent on administrative tasks that could be automated away. Like actually do that… write it down. Get your team to do it. I’ll wait. It’s not about taking over someone’s job- it’s about taking over crummy, soul-crushing, little-value-but-has-to-be-done tasks. If you want to explore how your enterprise can take advantage of these types of productivity gains in a safe, responsible way, let’s chat. Jody@CatoAISolutions.com CATO AI AI Solution Exchange https://lnkd.in/gGJcr66n

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Recently I interviewed Nathaniel Simard, founder & CEO of Tracel Technologies and inventor of the burn ML framework: Jan: Nathaniel, we're excited to have you as our guest today! To kick off our conversation, could you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and what got you into ML? Nathaniel: Sure, I'm the creator of Burn, a deep learning framework written in Rust, and the founder of Tracel AI. I started coding in the first year of university, where I was studying mechanical engineering, but I quickly switched to software engineering after, since I instantly fell in love with programming. Then I explored different facets of the field from backend to frontend development, and I decided to start my career as a consultant focused on software quality. After some time, I wanted to go deeper into AI, since I was always interested in the process of learning, so I enrolled for a master's degree at MILA. J: According to Github you started to work on burn in summer 2022. Since then has already earned over 7000 stars on GH. What was your initial motivation to develop a new ML framework? N: I always had a side project going on, for fun mostly and to learn new things. I wanted to explore asynchronous and sparse neural network architectures, where each sub-network can learn and interact with other sub-networks asynchronously and independently. I wasn't able to actually create something useful because I needed fine control over the gradients and the concurrency primitives, which is not easily done with Python and PyTorch. At the same time, I was working on machine translation models at my current job, and it was quite painful to put models into production. I decided to switch my side project to a new deep learning framework, with more flexibility regarding gradients and concurrency primitives as well as being more reliable and easier to deploy on any system. J: Amazing to see that this was born out of a side project! I feel the struggle with concurrency in Python and this is something where Rust really shines. What are some of the other key features that makes burn special? N: I think there are two things that really set Burn apart. First, almost all neural network structures are generic over the backend. The goal is that you can ship your model with almost no dependency, and anybody can run it on their hardware with the most appropriate backend, even embedded devices without an operating system. Second, Burn really tries to push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of performance and flexibility. It offers a fully eager API, but also operation fusion and other optimizations that are normally only found in static graph frameworks. The objective is that you don't have to choose between portability, flexibility, and performance; you can have it all! To read the rest of the interview with Nathaniel's plans for burn & trends in AI here: https://lnkd.in/dKv9ztMm #ml #ai

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Beer with Oshri at Typhoon in Montreal. I promise you that I am as much fun to talk to in person as my posts on LinkedIN :-) Let's talk shop, talk tech, share war stories, decompress, maybe learn a thing or two and have just the right amount of beer to spark an interesting conversation. Who is in? Location: Typhoon Montreal Date: Tuesday, June 4 at 8:30 PM Dress Code: Please wear pants; you will be among polite society Conversation starters: - Technical recruiting sucks - The last time you dropped a production database - That one time in band camp (Do you get the reference or am I old now?) - Client/employer/employee horror stories - Oshri what's your deal with growing food in your garage - Tech fighting words (Golang is great/sucks, dotnet is great/sucks, boo Microsoft, yay Microsoft...) - Startups... am I right...

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Good news 🇨🇦 Tech friends: AI Tinkerers Toronto Meetup is now live! Show don't tell. Join us to share your killer AI demo with fellow AI builders and researchers, on May 30th at Shopify HQ. No pitches! We want to see your messy WIP! Let's build 🇨🇦 / acc. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/g-C73dwm 💡 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗿𝘀? We are not just “AI enthusiasts”, we are AI tinkerers. AI Tinkerers is a meetup built around live demos, for tech entrepreneurs, hackers and those deeply passionate about creating LLM-enabled applications and have hands-on experience in building such systems. For those who remember... yes this is a lot like DemoCamp :) 🎤 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘀 We are actively looking for presenters! A presentation/demo is limited to 5-6 minutes in length and demonstrates a work in progress. We’ll select 4 or 5 of the most interesting topics to present. Note, as capacity to the event is limited, we’ll be prioritizing those that can demo something interesting. 🚀 Pls RSVP and spread the word! We've needed an event built around actual Demos. This is it. Sponsored by Shopify and Shopify Ventures; brought to you by the Human Feedback Foundation AIT city organizers. Let's go 🚀

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I just released the April edition of my AI & the Web newsletter. Nathaniel Simard, founder & CEO of Tracel Technologies and inventor of the burn ML framework, spoke with me about how he got into ML, burn, Tracel and the future of AI. WebGPU, the successor of WebGL, will soon also be supported in Firefox and Safari. Small, powerful LLMs running right in the browser is not a distant future, but are the next big thing in cost-effective and privacy-friendly AI. Google is working hard on better WASM support in the browser that makes ML models running fast even on low-end devices without GPU. With Llama 3 by AI at Meta and Phi 3 by Microsoft AI we got some exciting new, small modells. Llama 3 was already ported to run in the browser and we'll see Phi 3 soon as well. MusicGen has been ported to the browser in transformers.js by Hugging Face engineers and developed an online Jukebox running right in the browser. #webgpu #webml #ai #ml #llama3 #wasm https://lnkd.in/drJCY7Ew

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Check this article out. It showcases why we at Society Five.0 are working with businesses on their technology journey. Generative AI has great potential for Canadian businesses, but a new report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce shows few are adopting it. Only 9% of firms use generative tools, while 73% haven’t considered it. Larger and newer companies are more likely to experiment with the technology, but widespread adoption may not happen until 2030, putting Canada behind other economies. Many firms cite a lack of skilled workers and capital as barriers. Miki Reeder Laura Bodtker Michelle S. Olivia Grace Jacobs James Freeman, P.Eng. MBA FRCGS Adin Nand, P.Eng. Luticia L. Miller Niki Kearl Brett Colvin Justin Hantos Shannon Pestun Lynette Tremblay Adam Burley Sandeep Parmar, MBA Cameron Christensen Oba Harding Derek Armstrong Lora Bucsis

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As I look ahead to Shopify's Editions.dev next month in Toronto, the theme that emerges from the workshop topics centres squarely around flexibility and extensibility - two things close to our heart at Submarine. It reminds me that many of the more recent product advancements (extensibility everywhere, functions, Flow) were signposted in Ilya's "Principles of a modern commerce OS" whitepaper a couple of years ago. If you haven't come across it before, I'd definitely recommend it as an exponent of Shopify's high-level thinking around their product now and going forward: https://lnkd.in/gekRyMgP.

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Will you be at #CollisionConf in Toronto? Join me this Thursday for a conversation about #GenAI and the evolution of #softwaredevelopment.

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Last week some of the Crewjoy team was at INNOVATEwest, a technology and innovation-focused event in Vancouver. For me there were many outcomes from attending, and one of them was seeing the various parts of a team operating in unison. ✳ This is a picture of my co-founder Josh, who is not normally the face of our company, representing Crewjoy in a recorded interview conversation. ✳ He's talking with Andrea Bischoff, representing one of our partners avantage, about how Crewjoy is supporting their process of building high-performing consulting teams. ✳ Somewhere in the background is Shiela, our Community Manager, sparking great conversations about how Crewjoy is using AI to build more human-focused workplaces where engagement, joy, and productivity skyrocket. ✳ I could be found building new relationships with partners and customers. Often with individuals brought over by Trevor Kray of Avantage, after he helped them strategize on their pressing business challenges. ✳ And we were privileged to be partnering at the event with friends like Accelerate Okanagan, The Mullings Group (Search Canada), Tourism Kelowna, and Interpix Design Inc. I mention all of this not as a description of what we've been up to, but because of how an event like this is a great microcosm of a healthy and productive team: Each person or part working in tandem with the others for shared success. That's what this felt like, and it's what we hope every team can experience. All of these people, partners, and activities activating strengths to better achieve outcomes. This was one event where that happened, but for our (and any) team to succeed, it needs to be happening all the time. That's what we built Crewjoy for! If you want help building a team like that, let's start. #crewjoy #avantage #aipowered #humancentered #teamperformance

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"We stopped paying all our bills, aside from payroll" - Startup survival tips by Ben-Zion from WOMBO.ai during a tough phase of growth before ultimately getting investments from JayZ and Beyoncé! At #TorontoTechFest with Michael / Mell Truong from AceSocial/Toronto Tech Week, Simba from OneEleven, Amy from GreenShield, Suhaib from Loblaw Digital, Scott from Revenue Engine, Natalie from Talk Shop, Benjamin from Boosted, Dr. Jennifer from SmartCloser AI (FindGrant helps #startups, #women, #bipoc and #indigenous #entrepreneurs find $37B in #grants within #Canada from the Federal, Provincial and City governments.. Try our beta at https://FindGrant.ca)

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Sharing this here to amplify the great work by Kurt de Vries and his fellow Champions at Trade Commissioner Service | Service des délégués commerciaux for all Canadian #Founders and #Startups. The business development and investor events on the #SiliconValley missions connect you to all the right people who are actively scouting and investing. This is well worth it. #autotech #autonomousvehicles #smartcockpit #digitaltwin #lidar #semiconductor #sensor #electricvehicles #batteries #cybersecurity #automation #robotics #futuremobility #venturecapital #privateequity #biometrics

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Transcendence Series: The Founders and Leaders of Deep Learning   Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun are three Canadian computer scientists who are widely regarded as the founders and leaders of deep learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that uses neural networks to learn from large amounts of data and perform complex tasks such as image recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, and self-driving cars. They have also received numerous awards and recognitions for their work, including the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, in 2018. Yoshua Bengio is a professor at the University of Montreal and the founder and scientific director of Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, the largest academic research center in the world dedicated to deep learning. He is also a co-founder and senior fellow of the Vector Institute, a research institute for artificial intelligence based in Toronto. He has published over 500 papers and several books on machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, and related topics, such as Learning Deep Architectures for AI, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks and Learning Machines. He is also an entrepreneur and a co-founder of several companies that apply deep learning to various domains, such as Element AI, Imagia, and Lyrebird. Geoffrey Hinton is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and was vice president and engineering fellow at Google - he departed on 2023 citing concerns on the usage of AI technology. He is also the chief scientific adviser of the Vector Institute and a founding director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London. He has published over 200 papers and several books on machine learning, neural networks, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, such as Parallel Distributed Processing, Connectionist Models of Cognition and Perception, and The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks. He is also an inventor and a co-inventor of several algorithms and techniques that are widely used in deep learning, such as backpropagation, Boltzmann machines, contrastive divergence, and dropout. Yann LeCun is a professor at New York University and the chief AI scientist at Facebook. He is also the founding director of the NYU Center for Data Science and the co-director of the NYU Center for Neural Science. He has published over 300 papers and several books on machine learning, computer vision, neural networks, and artificial intelligence, such as Convolutional Networks and Applications in Vision, Deep Learning, and Theoretical Computer Science. He is also an innovator and a pioneer of several breakthroughs in deep learning, such as convolutional neural networks, the LeNet architecture, and the MNIST database.   Note: This is the twentieth post in the series. The goal is to highlight significant figures who have made an impact on technology and its application to human endeavors. 

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Effective AI models require high-quality data for good results. A clear prompt is crucial. In a new video, Gwyneth Peña-Siguenza demos the balance between brevity and specificity in prompts. Prompt engineering matters for Large Language Models (LLMs). Keep prompts single, short, and specific for better outcomes. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gstxruhv #GitHub #copilot #msftadvocate

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We have been everywhere lately. Read Kristi Kitz, our Head of Design at Accelerated Focus, experienced at the AI Upper Bound AI Conference last week. Doing everything we can to offer the most value to our customers. #AI #OutSystems #AIAF

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