Now Facebook is opening an AI research lab in Canada

Canada is rapidly becoming the hot bed for AI talent and research. Joining the likes of Google and Microsoft, Social networking giant Facebook is now opening a new AI research office in Montreal, Canada.

Joelle Pineau, the co-director of McGill University’s Reasoning and Learning Lab and the incoming president of the International Machine Learning Society, will lead the lab. Her work primarily focuses on robotics and dialog systems, particularly applications of reinforcement learning. Pineau will retain her academic position while leading the Facebook lab, which should employ 10 people by the end of this month. She will also be joined by Pascal Vincent, an associate professor at the University of Montreal.

Besides the lab, Facebook has also committed about $5.75 million to support AI research at McGill, the University of Montreal, the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

The move comes a week after IBM said it would spend $240 million on a new AI lab in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Facebook currently operates AI research centers in Paris, New York City and Menlo Park, employing about 105 researchers. The aim is to grow the Montreal group from its founding team of four to 30 or 40 quickly.