Artificial Intelligence in Canada: A Review

Canadians have made many contributions to artificial intelligence over the years This article presents a summary of current research in artificial intelligence in Canada and acquaints readers with the Canadian organization for artificial intelligencethe Canadian Society for the Computational Studies of Intelligence/Societk Canadienne pour l’lktude de 1’Intelligence par Ordinateur (CSCSI/SCEIO). MOST CANADIAN AI research is carried out in universities (primarily in computer science departments), with only a small amount of research being pursued in governnlent laboratories or in private industry, AI research and development is fairly evenly distributed across the country, with approximately as many AI researchers in the west as in the east, though there are relatively fewer AI researchers in the maritimes. We summarize Canadian AI research efforts and provide a cross-reference from areas of interest to researchers in Appendix 1. In the discussion below we place the various research and development endeavors within the Canadian national AI context. Our information was solicited by questionnaire, telephone and in-person conversations, and personal knowledge. Initially, a long questionnaire was circulated via the CSCSI/SCEIO Newsletter (vol 2, #l) in March, 1983. Poor response to the questionnaire prompted another, shorter We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Office of the Associate Academic Vice-President of Simon Fraser 1Jniversity We also thank Josie Backhouse for telephoning the CSCSI/SCEIO membership and helping to organize and collect data WC thank Carol Murchison for helping to edit this article. questionnaire to be sent directly to the CSCSI/SCEIO mcmbership. Response to this questionnaire was somewhat better. Although the number of short questionnaires we received was substantial, we nevertheless mdertook a telephone campaign in a third attempt to reach members who did not fill out thil questionnaire. The telephone campaign paid handsome dividends and we were able to contact an additional 21 members. During the process of collating results from the questionnaire we made additional telephone calls to respondcnts and others to clarify possible misinterpretations. A CSCSI/SCEIO report summarizing all of the questionnaire responses is available by writing to any of the CSCSI/SCEIO executives (see Appendix 2). Two universities have emphasized AI over the years to the extent of engaging professors who specialize in AI research and graduating AI Ph.Ds. The University of British Cohmlbia [UBC] in Vancouver currently has five professors with primary interest in AI, over 20 AI-oriented graduate students, and several main research directions including computational vision, natural language understanding, and representation of knowledge. UBC is the home of the Laboratory for Computational Vision which provides facilities and coordination to the computational vision research effort. The University of Toronto [UT] currently has four professors with full-time AI interests, several professors with at least peripheral interest, and approximately 30 AI-oricntcd graduate students. Toronto’s research areas include representation of knowledge, natural language understanding, computer vision, and medical expert systems. AI faculty at, Toronto are members of the Computer Systems Research Institute which provides facilities to many experimentally oriented computer scieme research projects. Five other universities also have made significant, com50 THE AI MAGAZINE Winter, 1985 AI Magazine Volume 5 Number 4 (1984) (© AAAI)