Samsung Amplifies AI R&D with New Montreal Lab

Samsung has opened a new research lab at the University of Montreal in Quebec.

Dubbed the Samsung AI Lab, the research center was established by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), and will focus on artificial intelligence. The establishment of the lab comes after years of collaboration with U of M’s Prof. Yoshua Bengio, a specialist in machine learning and artificial intelligence, who has worked with Samsung since 2014.

The AI Lab will see Samsung staff brought in from South Korea to work with local academics in areas including “voice/image recognition, translation, autonomous driving, and robots,” according to a statement announcing the new facility. The AI Lab “will also contribute to acquiring global talents”, the company said.

The AI Lab’s establishment reflects what appears to be a strengthening focus on AI technology on Samsung’s part. The company also recently announced a partnership with Kakao, a South Korea-based mobile messenger service operator that has developed substantial expertise in machine vision and AI technologies. Part of the company’s aim is to enhance its Bixby AI assistant platform, but its AI R&D could also have applications in other areas such as its smart car efforts.

This ramp-up in AI R&D is showing no sign of slowing down, with Samsung also announcing that its new Montreal-based AI Lab will soon be complemented by a Korean “Neural Processing Research Center” that will collaborate with the Seoul National University.