Stats Canada, Mila partner on advance ethical AI

Statistics Canada has established a partnership with Mila, a Montreal-based academic research centre in deep learning (DL). By joining Mila’s diversified community, Statistics Canada will be able to access a broader artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and partnership toolbox, effectively accelerating Statistics Canada’s ethical AI and ML research.

“Data science is a team sport and this partnership allows us to collectively grow our respective teams’ knowledge in these crucial research areas,” said Chief Statistician of Canada Anil Arora. “As a trusted data science leader, Statistics Canada works on the cutting-edge of artificial intelligence and machine learning projects. This new partnership supports our commitment to modernization as we continue to look for areas for improvement. It will also help us to maintain our position as a global leader in official statistics and deliver better services to Canadians.”

Source: Mila

Mila, a non-profit organization, is internationally recognized for its significant contributions in the areas of language modelling, machine translation, object recognition and generative models. Building relationships with Mila’s community of 900 researchers will allow Statistics Canada to hear perspectives from a variety of peers and to collaborate with like-minded communities of practice. It will also offer Statistics Canada unique access to a growing pool of domestic and global talent.

“Mila’s partnership with Statistics Canada provides an exciting opportunity to combine our expertise and explore specific ML and AI challenges,” said Stéphane Létourneau, Executive Vice President of Mila. “Mila’s research community works daily towards the democratization of machine learning and the development of responsible AI. We are thrilled to continue these efforts alongside our new partner.”

Arora added the partnership will allow Statistics Canada to have direct access to up-and-coming experts in the field. “Being able to tap into that expertise, collaborate on projects, and discover what the next generation of leading AI and ML researchers are developing is a tremendous upside for the agency.”