Top AI researcher launches new Alberta lab with Huawei funds after Ottawa restrictions

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One of the country’s most accomplished artificial intelligence researchers is launching a new non-profit lab with $4.8-million in funding from Huawei Canada, after the federal government restricted the Chinese company’s ability to work with publicly funded universities.

Richard Sutton, a professor at the University of Alberta and a pioneer in the field of reinforcement learning, says the Openmind Research Institute will fund researchers following the Alberta Plan, a 12-step guide he co-authored last year that lays out a framework for pursuing the development of AI agents capable of human-level intelligence.

Openmind will be based in Edmonton and kicks off Friday with a weekend retreat in Banff.

Canada banned the use of equipment from Huawei in 5G networks last year, citing the company as a security risk because of its connections to the Chinese government, which could use the company for espionage. Huawei has long denied the accusation.

Jim Hinton, a Waterloo, Ont.-based patent lawyer and senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said Huawei’s involvement with Openmind raises concerns. “Even if the money is coming with as little strings attached as possible, there is still soft power that is being wielded,” he said. “The fact that they’re holding the purse strings gives a significant amount of control.”

In 2021, Ottawa started restricting funding for research collaborations between publicly funded universities and entities with links to countries considered national security risks, including China. Alberta has implemented similar restrictions for sensitive research at a provincial level. Artificial intelligence is particularly sensitive because the technology has military applications and can be used for nefarious purposes.

“I hope that it could counter that narrative and be an example of how things could be really good,” Prof. Sutton said of Openmind and Huawei’s funding. “This is a case where the interaction with China has been really productive, really valuable in contributing to open AI research in Canada.”

All of the work done by Openmind, which is separate from Prof. Sutton’s role at the University of Alberta, will be open-source, and the institute will not pursue intellectual property rights.

Nor will Huawei. “I was a little bit surprised that they were willing to do something so open and with no attempt at control,” said Prof. Sutton, who has a long-standing relationship with Huawei in Alberta.

Huawei did not respond to requests for comment.

Although the Chinese company has been shut out of 5G networks and restricted in working with universities in Canada, it can still work directly with individual researchers.

“Companies linked to China’s military, like Huawei is, will try to find other ways around the federal rules, including directly funding researchers outside university institutions. It appears Huawei is doing exactly that,” said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa. “China pushes the envelope as far as they can.”

Prof. Sutton wrote the textbook – literally – on reinforcement learning, which is an approach to developing AI agents capable of performing actions in an environment to achieve a goal. Reinforcement learning is everywhere in the world of AI, including in autonomous vehicles and in how chatbots such as ChatGPT are polished to sound more human.

Born in the United States, Prof. Sutton completed a PhD at the University of Massachusetts in 1984 and worked in industry before returning to academia. He joined the University of Alberta in 2003, where he founded the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab. He left the U.S. for Canada partly because of his opposition to the politics of former president George W. Bush and the country’s military campaigns abroad.

Alphabet Inc. tapped him in 2017 to lead the company’s AI research office in Edmonton through its DeepMind subsidiary, but shut it down in January as part of a company-wide restructuring.

The closing left Prof. Sutton with unfinished business, in a sense. His goal is to “understand intelligence,” as he puts it, a necessary undertaking if we are to build truly intelligent agents. His work at the university is one avenue to pursue that goal, as is his recent post with Keen Technologies, a U.S. AI startup founded by former Meta Platforms Inc. consulting chief technology officer John Carmack. Keen raised US$20-million last year, including from Shopify founder Tobi Lütke.

Openmind is one more way to pursue that goal, Prof. Sutton said. Although large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT, have garnered a lot of attention, he isn’t particularly interested in them. “It’s a good, useful thing, but it’s kind of a distraction,” he said.

He is far more interested in building AI applications capable of complex decision-making and achieving goals, which many refer to as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. “I imagine machines doing all the different kinds of things that people do,” he said. “They will interact and find, just like people do, that the best way to get ahead is to work with other people.”

Prof. Sutton will sit on the Openmind governing board along with University of Alberta computer science professor Randy Goebel and Joseph Modayil, who previously worked at DeepMind. Mr. Modayil is also Openmind’s research director.

“Understanding the mind is a grand scientific challenge that has driven my work for more than two decades,” he said in an e-mail.

A committee that includes Alberta Plan co-authors and U of A professors Michael Bowling and Patrick Pilarski will select the research fellows. Openmind’s research agenda will be set independently from its funding sources, according to a backgrounder on the institute provided by Prof. Sutton.

The briefing also notes that Openmind researchers will be natural candidates for founding startups and commercializing research outside the non-profit. “Although there may be no legal obligation for an Openmind researcher to work with Openmind donors, familiarity, trust, and consilient perspectives would make this a likely outcome,” according to the backgrounder.

The backing from Huawei puts the company in a better position to work with Openmind talent, Mr. Hinton said. Even though the research will be open-source, foreign multinational companies such as Huawei are often more equipped to capitalize on it than Canadian firms, which have a poor track record of protecting intellectual property and capturing the economic benefits that come with innovation.

Canadian governments review transactions involving foreign companies and physical assets, such as mines, to ensure the domestic economy benefits. But they fall short with IP. “When it comes to intangible assets, we don’t understand how that works,” Mr. Hinton said.

Prof. Sutton is a big proponent of open-source and has a dim view of IP, saying that the focus on ownership can slow down innovation. “You are interacting with lawyers and spending a lot of time and money on things that aren’t advancing the research,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem like it’s worked at all for computer science IP.”

He is open to more funding for Openmind and said that if donors are uncomfortable with Huawei’s involvement they can also support AI research through the reinforcement learning lab at the University of Alberta. Openmind is “adamant” that Huawei cannot influence the non-profit’s research, he added, and said he would decline further funding if the company attempted to do so.

“I see this as a purely positive and mutually beneficial way for Huawei and academic researchers to interact,” he said. “It may not last, but while it does, it is entirely a good thing.”

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