Omnipresent in 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) nevertheless remains a mysterious science for ordinary mortals. By focusing on very concrete projects, in health, transport or industry, the Institute of Applied Artificial Intelligence officially inaugurated this Friday by Concordia University hopes to partially lift the veil.
Posted at 3:00 a.m.
Founded in 2021 by three professors from Concordia University’s Gina-Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science, the Institute brings together 95 professors and 200 graduate students from 4 faculties. In particular, it set up, last fall, an applied training program in partnership with the Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson, which aims to be a model of interdisciplinarity and application of AI. The first cohort will end its activities this week.
“It’s an original program: unlike other courses, this one is project-based,” explains Tristan Glatard, co-director of the Institute with Fenwick McKelvey. Each of the 120 participants arrived with their own project, for example product ideas. The whole objective was to support them with 80 hours of training. »
Ethics and cellular networks
This training, which is intended to be very concrete, is vital to alleviate the shortage of qualified manpower, glaring in computer science and artificial intelligence, he explains.
Concordia has a fairly long tradition of collaboration with industry, and with society in general. It is a university very open to the world.
Tristan Glatard, co-director of the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence
The Institute will mainly focus on three areas: the effects of AI application on society, deep learning in medical imaging, and integration in smart cities and industry.
Ericsson, for example, is counting on its partnership with Concordia to better manage the energy consumption of its networks using AI, explains Paul Baptista, head of research and development in Montreal for Ericsson Canada. “With intelligent algorithms, we can modulate the consumption of these networks while meeting demand. It is this intelligence that we must build in our networks in order to then bring it to our customers. »
The Institute of Applied Artificial Intelligence will be subject to an annual evaluation, which will take into account in particular the number of partnerships, the people who have been trained, the patents registered and the publications resulting from the work, indicates Mourad Debbabi, director of the Cybersecurity Center and Dean of the Gina-Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. A committee will also be called upon to improve the programs. “We often question our orientation to be on the lookout for the best. »
Tristan Glatard wants diversity and inclusion to be at the heart of the institute he co-directs. “The world of AI is quite masculine,” he notes.