Cam Linke is the CEO of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) Over the past 10 years, he has worked as a CEO, investor, community builder, product manager, entrepreneur, academic, and developer. Past roles include Co-founder of Startup Edmonton, Founding father of Flightpath Ventures, CEO of Touch Metric, Product Manager at Nexopia.com, and Founding father of DemoCamp Edmonton.

Linke is a sought-after speaker and mentor and has been recognized as Avenue Magazine Top 40 Under 40. He can be a man-made intelligence researcher, currently studying under Dr. Richard Sutton and Dr. Adam White. His research, which focuses on AI adapting behaviors’ to enhance their very own self-learning, has been published at top conferences.

We sat down for an interview on the annual 2023 Upper Certain conference on AI that’s held in Edmonton, AB and hosted by Amii.

You previously co-founded Startup Edmonton. Could you share some details on how that process began and what your mindset was?

Startup Edmonton was a culmination of plenty of work that Ken, who I co-founded Startup Edmonton with, and myself, were doing as one-off pieces, just attempting to either solve problems or do things to assist construct the community.  I’d began an event called DemoCamp mainly to find a way to indicate off the cool things that were being in-built town and to have a likelihood for the startup and tech community to find a way to return together and talk. And it was one in every of these situations where there’s plenty of cool things happening in town, but no person knew about them and no person knew about one another because there wasn’t really a likelihood for people to attach. DemoCamp was one, and BarCamp was a little bit bit greater version of that.

We ran a thing called Founders and Funders, attempting to connect founders and investors earlier outside of the angel groups or pitch competitions, to construct a stronger network between those groups. We had began running TEDx on the time, it was only a growing variety of things that we were doing, eventually, hit some extent where we checked out three things. One was we desired to coordinate efforts a little bit bit more across all of the things that we were doing together. We would have liked a company for that. The opposite part is we were doing plenty of event-driven things, and that was great, but we see the community come together, there’d be plenty of energy, then that might dissipate quite a bit between events because there wasn’t really that central place that folks were, entrepreneurs, people in tech, were spending regular amounts of time. We actually need to have space co-working, hot desking. A majority of these things didn’t really exist in town on the time.

After which the third one was just early funding like here’s your first $10,000 check simply to get going. Funding like that did not really exist. We officially launched Startup Edmonton at that time, opened an area within the Mercer Constructing over on 104th there to find a way to have each the space, to find a way to have events and more community-driven things, have co-workings in order that early stage startups and early stage entrepreneurs were in a position to be around one another and wasn’t this just one-off every couple months. To find a way to be around one another, learn, and grow from one another. After which, at the moment, we also raised and launched a fund called FlightPath Ventures, and we were the primary check for numerous startups to resolve those challenges that we were seeing.

What common traits have you ever seen in founders that you’ve got invested in?

The most important thing that defines founders and entrepreneurs is that they’re problem solvers they usually’re builders. For those who have a look at every one in every of the businesses that ended up doing well in our portfolio, if you happen to have a look at the founders on the town or around the globe, they give the impression of being for problems to resolve and opportunities to find a way to create change, after which they’re builders. It is not like I can point at the issue and inform you that problem exists. I will be the one constructing the answer to do this, to resolve this.  Poppy Barley was an early company we invested in. Women finding boots and footwear that matches the issue that they sought to resolve. And now they have this great company, Poppy Barley, and this incredible brand that is doing that. Builders and problem solvers are ultimately, to me, the defining trade of entrepreneurs.

You’ve launched plenty of businesses, what drives you personally?

I have no grand life plan or anything like that. I like constructing interesting things with interesting people. I like solving problems and I like being around those who like to resolve problems. And Startup Edmonton was actually that. After we raised FlightPath, same thing. Here at Amii, we now have a gaggle of those who love to construct things and love to resolve problems. And being around that group is just incredibly exciting. So just solving interesting things with interesting people is the massive thing for me.

Amii was founded in 2002. Could you share the genesis story behind this organization?

Why the heck is Edmonton one in every of the places leading the world on this AI and machine learning thing? Because that not what everybody would’ve guessed. For those who return in time to the 2001, 2002 time period, there’s just a few things. University of Alberta has all the time been a terrific place for AI. I’ve all the time been like, for a very long time, early. I believe it was the primary Computing Science PhD program in Canada if I recall, but early Computing Science pioneers as a university in AI overall, with people like Jonathan Schaeffer, Randy Goebel, Russ Greiner, they’d a solid group of individuals in AI within the Computing Science Department there really checked out it and, at the identical time, so on this 2001, 2002 time period, the Alberta government had launched the Alberta Ingenuity Centers Program.

So we now have the chance to take a few of the money that we have made here in energy, oil and gas, and invested in what the long run of the province goes to be. They invested in just a few centers across the province. And Randy, Russ, Rob, and Jonathan got here together and said, hey, you understand what? This area of machine learning is basically going to be a driving force, goes to be necessary going forward, and we now have the ingredients to be leaders in that. This must be what a middle is predicated around. The Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning was the initial center that was created. And that investment in ongoing research and the flexibility for people to each attract and train incredible grad students and find a way to do forward-looking discovery-based research was ultimately what the middle was founded on.

And since of that, we’re in a position to track some incredible researchers here. On the time, we were in a position to track Wealthy Sutton, Michael Bowling, Dale Schuurmans, a few of the initial group there who at the moment are pioneers and the worldwide leaders in reinforcement learning and other areas of machine learning overall. That initial investment on the time led to Edmonton being one in every of the three centers of excellence nationally when the feds launched the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy.

A part of the mandate for presidency funding has been healthcare research. What’s essentially the most interesting research you see on this area at Amii?

If you have a look at the challenges that exist on the planet, healthcare is actually one which’s right up there. To find a way to make use of machine learning or artificial intelligence to have a meaningful impact there’s just so necessary. We have been fortunate to be a part of numerous each research projects. Osmar R. Zaiane and Yutaka Yasui, two of our fellows, won a Thailand innovation award for a small scale tuberculosis diagnosis project that they built to scale back the time to do tuberculosis diagnosis. Recruiting J. Ross Mitchell here who sits in the school of Medicine and splits his time between being in clinic and learning concerning the challenges that clinicians are facing, after which having the ability to use that or use machine learning to resolve those problems.

Having Ross here and the work that he’s doing on things like image colorization on large language models within the healthcare setting and the best way to be certain that that we might be successful there is basically necessary. There is not any end to the flexibility for AI to have an effect on the healthcare system and we’re continuing to drive increasingly research forward in the world.

There’s plenty of research on prosthetics as well, which I’ve learned, which is kind of interesting.

Patrick Pilarski has a lab in the school of Medicine as well, really focused on artificial limb research. And his lab’s really interesting. It’s got three parts. Considered one of his co-researchers is what sensors we will attach to the human body to get increasingly wealthy signals from someone, from an amputee for instance. Then in the center a part of their lab, they’re how can we engineer different limbs. They’ve created their very own open source limb platform for people to find a way to work and do research like this on. After which the core of his lab there’s how can we use machine learning in his case?

Again, how can we use reinforcement learning to find a way to have the limb learn concerning the user and never just the user learn concerning the limb because, ultimately, the perfect world can be, you will have an amputee who’s in a position to use their limb in the way in which you and I exploit ours and never should take into consideration toggling through switches to find a way to maneuver over to the danger control and toggling through switches to align my hand or my arm up accurately with my cup of coffee. But for a limb to find a way to learn what the user’s attempting to do, what their intent is in the meanwhile, and to find a way to be a partner identical to your limbs and my limbs are to us. It’s fascinating research that they are doing there and a few incredibly interesting and groundbreaking work.

Outside of healthcare, what other style of interesting research are your teams conducting?

We’re pretty broad across all areas of machine learning, which is basically interesting. You’ve an entire lot of fish who’s doing work on machine learning within the brain and having the ability to find out about how the brain processes inputs and what we will learn from as we’re constructing machine learning systems. The work that Martha and Adam White are working on around water treatment. How can we higher enable each more efficient water treatment plants, but additionally how can we allow these plants to find a way to operate more autonomously when you will have a labor shortage and a skill shortage in having the ability to deploy our treatment systems. There’s just plenty of fun stuff being done by our team. The pioneering work and fundamental work being done by people like Wealthy and Mike, the basics of reinforcement learning and the basics of really learning period are interesting and really incredible. I probably could go on ceaselessly with interesting stuff being done by all of our group. It’s fun.

What can be a moonshot business application that you would like to see from any of this research?

What would I’d wish to see as a moonshot? I believe the water treatment stuff is super interesting. Living on this city we now have great water, that is awesome. We take it as a right that that is just a traditional thing. There’s plenty of communities that haven’t got clean drinking water. And it is a challenge. There’s an enormous global challenge. It is a challenge we shouldn’t have, but do in Canada and North America, and around the globe. If we will make a extremely big dent in that and we will solve that problem, that is an infinite opportunity right there.

It doesn’t take an excessive amount of looking outside. And unfortunately, plenty of North America has seen the smoke from the fires that appear to pop up increasingly across the continent every 12 months, from that to every thing with the pandemic, and having the ability to be prepared for that through to, as we mentioned, healthcare and the rising cost of healthcare, after which things like supply chain and food security, most of these things. There are only so many big challenges that, to me, it isn’t about one moonshot, however it’s about how can we use what I’d argue is an important tool of our time, to resolve these truly huge global challenges. And we’d like every tool possible and each opportunity possible to find a way to do this and to find a way to leverage AI. To find a way to make meaningful impact on those problems is basically exciting.

What’s your vision for the long run of AI?

To me, it’s really this piece of having the ability to leverage the continued scientific advances that we’re making and the really awesome those who we’re training, to find a way to go after and solve these huge problems. To me, that is really what we do here at Amii, which is each spend money on fundamental research and training and help lay the groundwork for these big advances to find a way to occur, but be certain that there that there is a bridge to having that impact out on the planet.

Working with corporations on connecting talent, on connecting opportunities, helping be certain that latest startups are in a position to be created out of this, and really upping the general understanding and literacy of as many individuals as possible in AI is basically, really necessary for us because that is just this incredible tool that we’d like to have everybody have as much of an understanding of as possible so it could have the largest and most positive impact it possibly can. That, to me, are the things that we’re driving here at Amii and what I believe the long run of AI goes to be going forward.

Is there any specific style of company that ought to have Amii on the radar to approach them?

Every company must have us on their radar. We work with corporations from one or two people through to a few of the largest corporations on the planet, and it’s really about meeting them where they’re at and helping them speed up their AI journey. For startups, it could be helping them discover where machine learning can have a meaningful impact straight away, can provide them a competitive advantage within the product that they are launching. For a corporation that is raised a series A or series B, they’re really serious about growing their machine learning team and ensuring that they are making meaningful investments which might be each going to have an effect now, but additionally going to have an effect over the multi-year timeframe of that funding that they raised, we now have programs and stuff built for them.

Through to medium to large corporations who know that AI goes to be a significant component of their industry going forward and want to know where and the way and what things they must be investing in and the way do I stay on each the leading edge of research or understand what’s being done there through to how do I be certain that that I’m actually having meaningful business impact out of this straight away. We work with corporations on every thing in that entire spectrum. For those who’re enthusiastic about AI, we’re set as much as find a way to work with you.

Should the businesses be in Canada or can it just be international?

We work with corporations in Canada. We work with corporations around the globe.