I wasn't too surprised. If you look at the Vector Institute website (http://vectorinstitute.ai/#people), you'll see many additional well-known researchers involved, in addition to Geoff Hinton:

David Duvenaud, Sanja Fidler, Brendan Frey, Roger Grosse, Geoffrey Hinton, Jordan Jacobs, Tomi Poutanen, Daniel Roy, Raquel Urtasun, Richard Zemel.

there is a lot more momentum at UofT in this specific area of research, more than there is at Waterloo.

Hinton? Wow. After decades of going on about neural nets while most machine learning folks pursued other things, he's sure milking his 15 minutes of fame for all they're worth!

He has achieved "rock-star" status in academia - quite deservingly. I wonder how much more he will contribute directly to the field during the remainder of his career. I suppose once you reach his level focusing on these grander initiatives will help create a legacy.

Funny aside: I saw him walking up University Ave a few weeks ago. He was all bundled up in a coat and hood. It was cold out, but I also suspect he is becoming recognizable as a celebrity by some and prefers to keep a low profile. If I had recognized him earlier I probably would have tried to stop and chat.

Funnily enough, I was searching for an official Vector website (which isn't linked from either the Google or U of T announcements), tried Googling it and didn't find anything. So thanks for the link.

The University of Toronto is probably a lot better funded than Waterloo, too, has a massive student base, and has connections to other local universities that are also much larger than Waterloo like York and Ryerson.

This selection will certainly put a dent in Waterloo's reputation, though with any luck they'll be able to capitalize on it in some capacity due to their proximity.

Sure, but Toronto and Waterloo have different reputations when it comes to Engineering and Computer Science.

And if it really matters to you that Waterloo be involved, it's obviously worth pointing out that Pearl Sullivan (Dean of Waterloo Engineering) is on the Board of Directors for the Vector Institute anyway.

I think Waterloo would be an unknown school if it were not for their coop program.

> This selection will certainly put a dent in Waterloo's reputation, though with any luck they'll be able to capitalize on it in some capacity due to their proximity.

Highly doubt it. Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research. People go to Waterloo to get into industry and not academics.

>Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research

Are you out of your mind?

Do you know why Waterloo's School of Computer Science is named after David R. Cheriton?

Yeah, the same DRC who made a major exit to Cisco, seed funded Google and hold an emeritus professorship at Stanford.

A sizeable chunk of the people who published Spark have done their undergrad' or research masters at UW.

Waterloo is definitely top-notch at the undergrad', perhaps less impressive than schools with bigger endowment at the research level, but far from being "trash". Tons of Waterloo profs are on the steering committees of major CS conferences (VLDB most notably).

This comment is so puerile, it has to be written by some jealous and petty undergraduate student. Or so I hope.

The most recent Times Higher Ed world university rankings for Computer Science put Toronto at 17, Waterloo at 23. The QS rankings give Toronto 11, Waterloo 26. You can debate the merit of rankings, but there's simply no credible way to argue that a school that routinely appears in in the world's top 30 is "mediocre/trash".

Relatedly, Waterloo is in fact included in the Budget 2017 funding for Canada's overall AI initiative, of which this Vector stuff is a part:

"In this budget, the government announced the creation of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which will promote collaboration between AI hubs Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, and Edmonton. It will be dedicating $125 million towards the launch of this strategy."

From the perspective of someone who's lived in both cities, it makes perfect sense. Toronto is a much much nicer place to live and it'll be way easier to attract talent to it. I wouldn't move back to Waterloo for any amount of money.

Why? I've never lived there but it seems one of the few places with tech jobs and houses that don't cost a million bucks.

Waterloo is great for backyards and parking. Toronto is great for urban living.

Take your pick :)

There's nothing there. It's a suburban wasteland.

Yes, you can buy a house there more cheaply than in Toronto. But is owning a pile of bricks worth living in a wasteland? Personal preference, as they say.

> Right? This is an odd choice.

Why? UofT / Hinton are doing the AI here...

Waterloo is good at churning out entry-level software engineers. UofT is much stronger for ML and research in general.

Geoff Hinton has deep roots with the rival University of Toronto and the surrounding ecosystem. His role and influence undoubtedly played a large part in this decision.

Few people want to live in Waterloo when they could live in Toronto instead.

It's part research center, part marketing expense...