A.I. Island 4: The Rise of the Celtic Robots

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are the hottest topics in technology at the moment. Over the past few weeks Ireland has demonstrated that there is a phenomenal amount of activity happening in AI/ML . The whole community has come together to demonstrate their capability and belief that Ireland is not just setting the trend, but showing the world how it’s done.

In the past few weeks there has be a fantastic amount of coverage for A.I. Island

• IDA released Ireland's value proposition for Artificial Intelligence
• TechIreland.org released their Artificial Intelligence Snapshot
• The Irish Times discuss the thriving AI ecosystem in Ireland
• Silicon Republic (one of the top global influencing publications in A.I.) published the A.I Island info-graphic which generated a phenomenal amount of social interaction
• The Predict Conference, held in Dublin this week, hosted global thought leaders in A.I.
• A National Post Graduate Masters course is on track to be established
• Veritas announced 250 new jobs many of which will have a Machine Learning focus.
• Prof. Barry O’Sullivan (Director of Insight, UCC), recognised as Researcher of the Year.
• Chicago-headquartered sports data intelligence player Stats is to create 100 new jobs at its new EMEA headquarters in Limerick.
• Microsoft announced another 200 jobs bringing them to 2000 employees in Ireland

Why now, what is it all about and why Ireland?

To understand the future we need to look at the past. Don't worry, this will not be a long lesson in Irish industrial history. I have mentioned in the past that Ireland’s current position in the top 10 for global innovation is not a revolution but an evolution. With 10 of the top 10 software companies, 10 of the top 10 born on the internet companies and many more calling Ireland home for the EMEA operations the journey each of these companies in Ireland been remarkable.

Taking a closer look, last year we release a time line of activity for some multinationals in Ireland and it tells the evolutionary story for many companies. Some of the companies that came to Ireland came here 30, 40 and 50 years ago, came with a low skill mandate, but over the years evolved to have global mandates in cutting edge technology development including Artificial Intelligence. Some great examples are IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Dell/EMC, Citi and many more.

From an Artificial Intelligence perspective there is a rich and long history. One of the founding fathers for modern day technologies and electronics is George Boole. Anyone who studied technology in college will undoubtedly have encountered Boolean Algebra.

In 1847 Boole, published one of the works that founded symbolic logic while lecturing in University College Cork. His combination of ideas from classical logic and algebra resulted in what is called Boolean algebra. Using variables and symbols, Boole designed a language for describing and manipulating logical statements and determining if they are true or not. In the 1930s, Boolean Algebra was applied to the first electrical circuits that would one day become our modern computers.

This is a pretty great accolade for University College Cork and justly so he is much celebrated there. What is even more interesting happened only a few years ago. In 2012, a man named Geoff Hinton and two of his other University of Toronto students entered an image recognition contest using a technique call artificial neural nets (discussed in A.I. Island 1). Competing teams build computer vision algorithms that learn to identify objects in millions of pictures; the most accurate wins. The model took the error rate of the best-performing algorithms to date, and the error rate of the average human, and snapped the difference in half like a dry twig. The trio created a company and Google acquired it where he currently works (as well as UoT). Why discuss Geoff Hinton? Well, he is George Booles Great Great Grandson. A really nice link to the father of modern day technology and the father of modern day A.I.

Today Prof. Barry O’Sullivan is keeping the A.I. pedigree alive and thriving in UCC. As the Director for the Insight Centre for Analytics in UCC, Barry won the Science Foundation Ireland researcher of the Year in 2016 for his work in A.I. and recently has been recognised as the UCC Researcher of the year for 2017.

Also one last little known fact: One of the greatest innovators in the field of Artificial Intelligence was John McCarthy. McCarthy widely recognized as the father of Artificial Intelligence. John McCarthy was born in Boston to Irish and Lithuanian immigrants in 1927, his father hailing from Cromane in County Kerry...

There is undoubtedly pedigree in technology in Ireland that goes way back in time. But what is happening now is a collision of confluences where capability and skills, investment, confidence, track record and technology that has catapulted Ireland into a leading force for Artificial Intelligence.

Last week TechIreland.org released their A.I. Snapshot focusing on investment and Irish companies both core and applied.

The effect of A.I. from an investment and jobs perspective is making a big impact. We have already seen tech giants acquire A.I. companies in Ireland such as the Intel/Movidius acquisition. The snapshot show Irish AI companies, which include the likes of Artomatix, Voysis, Nuritas, SoapBox Labs, Movidius and Aylien, have raised €354 million in total. Seven Irish companies have achieved funding of more than €10 million apiece. There are at least 66 companies working in the space locally, employing almost 2,500 people.

IDA Ireland also released the national value proposition for A.I. recently demonstrating a powerful eco-system of A.I. activity. SiliconRepublic.com (recently identified as one of the most influential publications globally for A.I) recently published IDA’s info-graphic and created great discussion online.

Some of the industry leaders and their activity are mentioned below. There is immense activity happening and companies are recognising that with a developed base and track record, access to Europe (and remaining in Europe) and availability of skills they are harnessing the power of A.I. from Ireland.

However with all new technologies (evolving technologies) to get deep insights, augmented perspectives and knowledge from the coal face of the numerous technologies in A.I. are the research and academic institutions in Ireland. With a combined work force of thousands across multiple areas the for Artificial Intelligence, a top 10 global scientific ranking and 1,600 industry collaborations, and funded researchers being involved in 2,359 international academic collaborations in 63 countries, companies are reaping the successes from collaboration.

The collaborations go beyond just research also. The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases will take place in the Croke Park Conference Centre, Dublin, Ireland during the 10 – 14 September 2018.

This event is the premier European machine learning and data mining conference and builds upon over 16 years of successful events and conferences held across Europe

Earlier this week, Cronan McNamaras, Predict Conference hosted thought leaders from Ireland and overseas to discuss the impact and technology of A.I. with an obvious buzz about the promise of opportunities to come.

Enhancing Skills of current employees for A.I.

Feedback from an event we held earlier this year from industry was that there was a global shortage of skilled workers in the space of A.I. There is a highly skilled cohort of graduates graduating from Irish Universities and to compliment these grads, the IDA working with other state agencies and industry partners (close to 30 companies) our sister agencies Enterprise Ireland, NSAI, SFI and Technology Ireland are developing, with Skillnet, a National Postgraduate Master’s Degree in AI for two participant cohorts: (a) existing employees of member companies as a two-year part-time course, and (b) graduates (potential new hires) as a one-year full-time course.

This initiative has emerged from needs expressed by member companies augmented by research and data from IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland and others.

The initiative is co-funded by the participating companies and the Irish Government through Skillnets Ltd. (www.skillnets.com) from the Department of Education and Skills under the National Training Fund. The network is coordinated by Technology Ireland, a federation within IBEC, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation.

Please feel free to get in touch if you would like more information.

Originally, A.I. Island 4 was supposed to analyse and discuss Organisational Transformation through the lens of A.I., however this will be next. With so much activity over the past recent weeks in the A.I. Island space I thought it appropriate to discuss why and bring attention to the great work by TechIreland, the academic institutions and the overall A.I. community in Ireland.

With continued investment, job creation and the innovative products and services being developed momentum is growing in Ireland for A.I. Island. Please feel free to contact IDA Ireland if you would like to know more

https://www.idaireland.com/contact-us