RBC to open AI lab in Montreal
Really big on collaboration
Borealis AI, a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Institute for Research, will open an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Montreal.
Borealis AI has partnered with McGill University Professor, Jackie Cheung, as academic advisor for the lab and will work with the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). The team anticipates opening the doors of the new location early in the new year.
Dr. Foteini Agrafioti, head, Borealis AI and chief science officer, RBC, says it’s “committed to helping advance the field through the creation of intellectual property”.
RBC says the field of natural language processing (NLP), i.e. the computer’s ability to understand human language, is considered one of the “key focus areas” of AI research. Its applications to financial services and other industries have “potential” – such as the analysis of unstructured text that is prevalent in public and RBC proprietary datasets.
Borealis AI was established in 2016, with labs in Toronto and Edmonton.
Also today (21 November), RBC has revealed it is a partner of the Creative Destruction Lab Montreal (CDL-Montreal). The result of a partnership between HEC Montréal and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, CDL-Montreal is a start-up support programme focused on AI.
Back in September, RBC, with the help of Personetics Cognitive Banking’s applications, unveiled two new services that provide AI-powered financial guidance and an automated savings programme through the bank’s mobile app.
