8 ms·

Google Raids Threaten Canada's Lead in Artificial Intelligence

57 points by bko 11y ago

graeme 11y ago
The increase in the purchasing power of the US dollar relative to the Canadian is surely having an impact here, particularly the large increase over the past year, from 1.12 to 1.39. In the 90s, when Canada's currency was low, there was similar talk of brain drain amongst highly educated professionals. USD to CAD chart for the past five years: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=5Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=5Y
jbob2000 11y ago
We can't compete, a research lab and accelerator won't change the fact that our dollar is 3/4s the American dollar. I could move to the states, take the same salary, and get an instant 30% raise. That, coupled with the fact that our goods are 10-20% more expensive than the states and our housing prices are skyrocketing, you're just shooting yourself in the foot by staying here.
- criley2 11y ago
  I'm curious how accurate a source like: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Canada&country2=United+States http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resul... Because, if rent and utilities are 40% average higher here and you make 30% more by moving, it may not be as big of a raise as you think.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    It may be accurate, but the number is meaningless for this purpose. Cost of living varies within the US by far more than that, and I'm sure the same is true of Canada. You'd have to look at the actual cost of living in the location a person is moving from and to.
    - DMac87 11y ago
      http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Toronto&country2=United+States&city2=San+Jose%2C+CA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
    - endtime 11y ago
      The cost of living in SV/SF is extremely high.
  - jbob2000 11y ago
    Canada has 2 tech hubs; the Greater Toronto Area, and Vancouver. Maybe you can count Montreal? In any case, the cost of living is very high in these areas, especially Vancouver. This is primarily brought on by a Canadian law which allows foreigners to purchase property in Canada, so wealthy Chinese are buying up property and using it to store wealth. In both Toronto and Vancouver, the public transit is abysmal and, in my opinion, 20 years behind what the population requires. So you NEED a car, and for Toronto at least, the insurance will kill you due to Ontario's "no fault" law. Our power infrastructure is crumbling as well. There was one point this summer where our power rates were temporarily jacked up by something like 300% due to an issue at a nuclear power station. A bad case of NIMBYism has delayed a gas power plant in the GTA, and the public company which manages power generation (Hydro One) recently sold a 60% stake to private investors. There is wide spread fear that the costs of power are going to skyrocket in the near future. The US has tech hubs all over the country. Houston, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, and those are just the big ones. If living in the "core" of these cities is too expensive, it is quite feasible to live on the outskirts and use the public transit to commute into the city. San Fran is a bit of an exception to this, as I understand it, though. I guess my point is, is that I have many many options in the States, whereas my hands are tied in Canada.
    - serge2k 11y ago
      > In both Toronto and Vancouver, the public transit is abysmal and, in my opinion, 20 years behind what the population requires. So you NEED a car Have you actually lived in Vancouver?
      - CountSessine 11y ago
        Have you actually lived in Vancouver? I do. I agree with him - the transit system here is abysmal for the job it should be doing. We had a referendum this year to expand translink, but it failed. Transit is moderately OK if you live in Vancouver-proper. But no one moves to Vancouver anymore because no one wants to raise a family in a 700 sqft apartment. Burquitlam/Richmond/Delta/Surrey? Forget about it; translink is awful there.
    - vkou 11y ago
  - nahname 11y ago
    Cost of living is much less in the US than Canada.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  But are goods and services in Canada correspondingly cheaper. In other words converted to US dollars, devs make less there, but is food, housing and healthcare also costing less?
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    >But are goods and services in Canada correspondingly cheaper. Only if they are made domestically without imported inputs. Currency depreciation lowers your standard of living and increases cost, it doesn't even make domestic goods more accessible - it only makes them cheaper compared to the imported alternatives - the only exception being if you earn money in foreign currency - in which case you are being stimulated as exporter. I doubt any of those is cheaper considering all the tax differences - for a young/healthy developer - health insurance will probably be a part of the package as well - the only exception would probably be housing which can vary.
  - stanmancan 11y ago
    No. A ton of Canadians close to the border regularly cross the border to buy goods, including groceries, gas, and electronics. All of which are typically substantially cheaper even if it's only a 30 minute drive away. The Canadian dollar is doing terribly right now, so it's not as beneficial, but even but even though our dollar is only at $0.72 you can STILL save a bit of money after the exchange rate. Services tend to be significantly cheaper. (Cell phone plans, taxi's, ect.)
    - klipt 11y ago
      Isn't that mostly because the US has lower sales tax? Technically you should probably be paying import taxes on stuff you buy in the US and take back to Canada. Similarly Californians can cross the state border to Oregon (which has no sales tax) and buy cheaper stuff there, but technically they have to pay California a use tax on those items equivalent to Californian sales tax.
      - slavik81 11y ago
        No. This is why Canadians cross the boarder to shop in the US: US: $30 - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EZYMF4 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EZYMF4 Canada: $70 - http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001EZYMF4 http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001EZYMF4
vkou 11y ago
When Google offers triple-the-pay (Overall compensation) for low-level Canadian SWEs, is it any wonder that it has no problem picking up AI researchers? Software engineers are paid relatively poorly in Canada, (Vancouver in particular) - and this is discounting the poor performance of the petro-canadian-dollar.
- api 11y ago
  Why? I've seen this before but it always mystified me. Oh, and totally tangentially but: how do human beings actually live in Vancouver? The rents and real estate prices are almost as bad as the Bay Area but minus the high paying jobs.
  - stanmancan 11y ago
    The Lower Mainland is a pretty big area, the farther away from Downtown Vancouver the lower the rent is. I rent a small 3 bedroom house in North Delta (about a 45 minute drive to Downtown, no traffic. An hour if I park and take the train in) and pay $1550/m plus utilities. The house we're in sold for $510,000 in November 2014. It's very difficult for any single family to purchase even a small house. The vast majority of the houses being sold where I live are being bought by Indian/East Asian families who will buy the property, tear down the house, build a massive multi-tenant home, and have 2-3 families living under the same roof. A ton of property is also being purchased by people who will get their Canadian residency, buy a bunch of property, but still live in China. The property is bought as investments and left empty. There are area's downtown that are full of 20+ story residential buildings but yet the streets are deserted since nobody is actually living there. Super strange. Everyone who I know who's purchased recently is either buying townhouses or condo's (which are both still going for a minimum of $350K for 1-2 bedrooms).
  - serge2k 11y ago
    Rents aren't as bad as the bay area (still awful) and the skytrain makes getting around easy. Most people just don't live in Vancouver proper. As for why, there isn't enough upward pressure. Vancouver is at least getting a few of the big companies, but they really need to get some big tech in sucking up talent to drive some competition in salaries. Currently if people want money they head south, those who stay are in a market where they can't command the big salaries.
ChrisArchitect 11y ago
ridiculous unexplanatory title had me wondering about 'raids'. "Brain Drain by US firms threatens Canada's lead in AI"
peter303 11y ago
For us old timers this is the third AI boom (including two "A.I. winters" in between). In the 1980s the boom was experts systems and logic inference supercomputers. Many computer science departments were decimated then.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > In the 1980s the boom was experts systems and logic inference supercomputers. Would you consider any current system or approaches are a continuation of that or did that end up a dead branch in the AI evolution so to speak. I can perhaps think of IBM's Watson as sort of continuing in that legacy.
  - hiddencost 11y ago
    This "third wave" isn't really AI, it's more "Machine Learning". Watson's question answering service is basically an ensemble of statistical methods, like everything else these days.
  - klipt 11y ago
    As I understand it the older expert systems tried to use rigid true/false rules. Modern systems use probabilistic models which are much more flexible.
potatolicious 11y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a Canadian expat who's been living and working in the US tech industry for a few years. > "Google Raids Threaten Canada's Lead in Artificial Intelligence" This seems like an unnecessary specific title, I'd suggest the following edit: "US Tech Company Compensation Threaten Canada's Trailing Status in All of Tech" For one thing, this isn't just an AI thing, US companies have been moving Canadian tech workers south of the border for years across the board, regardless of specialization or focus area. Everyone from the humblest code monkey to the brainiest algorithms wrangler is being exported from Canada at a rapid pace. This has been happening for long enough that a significant fraction of Canadian tech talent is already residing in the US, which sort of raises eyebrows about any claims that Canada "leads" in tech currently. If there ever was a lead the brain drain has certainly put that to bed long ago. And it's not just Google, all of the major companies recruit Canadians heavily, and even startups have gotten in on the game in recent years. And these aren't "raids". Google isn't marching off computer scientists at gunpoint. There's nothing predatory about this - if Canadian companies want to play in the same league as US tech, they need to catch up, the least of which is narrowing the pay gap. Right now I am literally making 500% the salary a similar position pays in Canada. Even accounting for the living costs of SF/SV/NYC it's not hard to see why people make the move. Canadian tech pays incredibly poorly in comparison to US tech, and that's far and away the #1 reason the brain drain exists and will persist. I'm a proud Canadian, and all else being equal I'd rather live in Canada than the US, but one of the persistently annoying things about Canada's tech industry narrative is the continuous denial of just how far behind they are compared to the US.
- branchless 11y ago
  500% ? What field? I'm in Canada and earning a good wage. I could go to some hellish place like NY and live in a cardboard box and up my wage 50% (and work longer hours, with less holidays so less time with my kids). I don't see 500% as a likely pay gap for most.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    I'm in iOS dev. > "I could go to some hellish place like NY and live in a cardboard box and up my wage 50% (and work longer hours, with less holidays so less time with my kids)." I hear this a lot from Canadian colleagues who stay in Canada, and I dunno, it always irks me a little bit. Increasing your wage doesn't necessarily entail longer hours or fewer holidays. It seems like it's a popular perception in Canada to imagine all US jobs as some kind of hellish sweatshop where you're chained to your desk all day in exchange for more money - but in reality the spread of job quality is the same here as it is in some place like Toronto or Vancouver. You will find the same shitty sweatshop jobs and you will find great jobs - the pay increase seems entirely orthogonal to that. The market rate is simply higher - much higher, across the board.
serge2k 11y ago
> “We are losing our top talent, the talent at every level,” says Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “While we had that advantage, it is slipping through our fingers.” well yeah, people want to go to the states and be paid more while working on interesting things.
api_or_ipa 11y ago
The article brought my ML prof at UBC, Nando de Freitas. Absolutely stunningly brilliant, in a way that inspired deep questions in philosophy, CompSci, math and psychology. It's a shame he no longer teaches at UBC and now works at Google.

57 points by bko 11y ago

The increase in the purchasing power of the US dollar relative to the Canadian is surely having an impact here, particularly the large increase over the past year, from 1.12 to 1.39. In the 90s, when Canada's currency was low, there was similar talk of brain drain amongst highly educated professionals. USD to CAD chart for the past five years: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=5Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=5Y

jbob2000 11y ago

We can't compete, a research lab and accelerator won't change the fact that our dollar is 3/4s the American dollar. I could move to the states, take the same salary, and get an instant 30% raise. That, coupled with the fact that our goods are 10-20% more expensive than the states and our housing prices are skyrocketing, you're just shooting yourself in the foot by staying here.

criley2 11y ago
I'm curious how accurate a source like: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Canada&country2=United+States http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resul... Because, if rent and utilities are 40% average higher here and you make 30% more by moving, it may not be as big of a raise as you think.
- mikeash 11y ago
  It may be accurate, but the number is meaningless for this purpose. Cost of living varies within the US by far more than that, and I'm sure the same is true of Canada. You'd have to look at the actual cost of living in the location a person is moving from and to.
  - DMac87 11y ago
    http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Toronto&country2=United+States&city2=San+Jose%2C+CA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
  - endtime 11y ago
    The cost of living in SV/SF is extremely high.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  Canada has 2 tech hubs; the Greater Toronto Area, and Vancouver. Maybe you can count Montreal? In any case, the cost of living is very high in these areas, especially Vancouver. This is primarily brought on by a Canadian law which allows foreigners to purchase property in Canada, so wealthy Chinese are buying up property and using it to store wealth. In both Toronto and Vancouver, the public transit is abysmal and, in my opinion, 20 years behind what the population requires. So you NEED a car, and for Toronto at least, the insurance will kill you due to Ontario's "no fault" law. Our power infrastructure is crumbling as well. There was one point this summer where our power rates were temporarily jacked up by something like 300% due to an issue at a nuclear power station. A bad case of NIMBYism has delayed a gas power plant in the GTA, and the public company which manages power generation (Hydro One) recently sold a 60% stake to private investors. There is wide spread fear that the costs of power are going to skyrocket in the near future. The US has tech hubs all over the country. Houston, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, and those are just the big ones. If living in the "core" of these cities is too expensive, it is quite feasible to live on the outskirts and use the public transit to commute into the city. San Fran is a bit of an exception to this, as I understand it, though. I guess my point is, is that I have many many options in the States, whereas my hands are tied in Canada.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    > In both Toronto and Vancouver, the public transit is abysmal and, in my opinion, 20 years behind what the population requires. So you NEED a car Have you actually lived in Vancouver?
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      Have you actually lived in Vancouver? I do. I agree with him - the transit system here is abysmal for the job it should be doing. We had a referendum this year to expand translink, but it failed. Transit is moderately OK if you live in Vancouver-proper. But no one moves to Vancouver anymore because no one wants to raise a family in a 700 sqft apartment. Burquitlam/Richmond/Delta/Surrey? Forget about it; translink is awful there.
  - vkou 11y ago
- nahname 11y ago
  Cost of living is much less in the US than Canada.
rdtsc 11y ago
But are goods and services in Canada correspondingly cheaper. In other words converted to US dollars, devs make less there, but is food, housing and healthcare also costing less?
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >But are goods and services in Canada correspondingly cheaper. Only if they are made domestically without imported inputs. Currency depreciation lowers your standard of living and increases cost, it doesn't even make domestic goods more accessible - it only makes them cheaper compared to the imported alternatives - the only exception being if you earn money in foreign currency - in which case you are being stimulated as exporter. I doubt any of those is cheaper considering all the tax differences - for a young/healthy developer - health insurance will probably be a part of the package as well - the only exception would probably be housing which can vary.
- stanmancan 11y ago
  No. A ton of Canadians close to the border regularly cross the border to buy goods, including groceries, gas, and electronics. All of which are typically substantially cheaper even if it's only a 30 minute drive away. The Canadian dollar is doing terribly right now, so it's not as beneficial, but even but even though our dollar is only at $0.72 you can STILL save a bit of money after the exchange rate. Services tend to be significantly cheaper. (Cell phone plans, taxi's, ect.)
  - klipt 11y ago
    Isn't that mostly because the US has lower sales tax? Technically you should probably be paying import taxes on stuff you buy in the US and take back to Canada. Similarly Californians can cross the state border to Oregon (which has no sales tax) and buy cheaper stuff there, but technically they have to pay California a use tax on those items equivalent to Californian sales tax.
    - slavik81 11y ago
      No. This is why Canadians cross the boarder to shop in the US: US: $30 - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EZYMF4 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EZYMF4 Canada: $70 - http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001EZYMF4 http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001EZYMF4

vkou 11y ago

When Google offers triple-the-pay (Overall compensation) for low-level Canadian SWEs, is it any wonder that it has no problem picking up AI researchers? Software engineers are paid relatively poorly in Canada, (Vancouver in particular) - and this is discounting the poor performance of the petro-canadian-dollar.

api 11y ago
Why? I've seen this before but it always mystified me. Oh, and totally tangentially but: how do human beings actually live in Vancouver? The rents and real estate prices are almost as bad as the Bay Area but minus the high paying jobs.
- stanmancan 11y ago
  The Lower Mainland is a pretty big area, the farther away from Downtown Vancouver the lower the rent is. I rent a small 3 bedroom house in North Delta (about a 45 minute drive to Downtown, no traffic. An hour if I park and take the train in) and pay $1550/m plus utilities. The house we're in sold for $510,000 in November 2014. It's very difficult for any single family to purchase even a small house. The vast majority of the houses being sold where I live are being bought by Indian/East Asian families who will buy the property, tear down the house, build a massive multi-tenant home, and have 2-3 families living under the same roof. A ton of property is also being purchased by people who will get their Canadian residency, buy a bunch of property, but still live in China. The property is bought as investments and left empty. There are area's downtown that are full of 20+ story residential buildings but yet the streets are deserted since nobody is actually living there. Super strange. Everyone who I know who's purchased recently is either buying townhouses or condo's (which are both still going for a minimum of $350K for 1-2 bedrooms).
- serge2k 11y ago
  Rents aren't as bad as the bay area (still awful) and the skytrain makes getting around easy. Most people just don't live in Vancouver proper. As for why, there isn't enough upward pressure. Vancouver is at least getting a few of the big companies, but they really need to get some big tech in sucking up talent to drive some competition in salaries. Currently if people want money they head south, those who stay are in a market where they can't command the big salaries.

ChrisArchitect 11y ago

ridiculous unexplanatory title had me wondering about 'raids'. "Brain Drain by US firms threatens Canada's lead in AI"

peter303 11y ago

For us old timers this is the third AI boom (including two "A.I. winters" in between). In the 1980s the boom was experts systems and logic inference supercomputers. Many computer science departments were decimated then.

rdtsc 11y ago
> In the 1980s the boom was experts systems and logic inference supercomputers. Would you consider any current system or approaches are a continuation of that or did that end up a dead branch in the AI evolution so to speak. I can perhaps think of IBM's Watson as sort of continuing in that legacy.
- hiddencost 11y ago
  This "third wave" isn't really AI, it's more "Machine Learning". Watson's question answering service is basically an ensemble of statistical methods, like everything else these days.
- klipt 11y ago
  As I understand it the older expert systems tried to use rigid true/false rules. Modern systems use probabilistic models which are much more flexible.

potatolicious 11y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a Canadian expat who's been living and working in the US tech industry for a few years. > "Google Raids Threaten Canada's Lead in Artificial Intelligence" This seems like an unnecessary specific title, I'd suggest the following edit: "US Tech Company Compensation Threaten Canada's Trailing Status in All of Tech" For one thing, this isn't just an AI thing, US companies have been moving Canadian tech workers south of the border for years across the board, regardless of specialization or focus area. Everyone from the humblest code monkey to the brainiest algorithms wrangler is being exported from Canada at a rapid pace. This has been happening for long enough that a significant fraction of Canadian tech talent is already residing in the US, which sort of raises eyebrows about any claims that Canada "leads" in tech currently. If there ever was a lead the brain drain has certainly put that to bed long ago. And it's not just Google, all of the major companies recruit Canadians heavily, and even startups have gotten in on the game in recent years. And these aren't "raids". Google isn't marching off computer scientists at gunpoint. There's nothing predatory about this - if Canadian companies want to play in the same league as US tech, they need to catch up, the least of which is narrowing the pay gap. Right now I am literally making 500% the salary a similar position pays in Canada. Even accounting for the living costs of SF/SV/NYC it's not hard to see why people make the move. Canadian tech pays incredibly poorly in comparison to US tech, and that's far and away the #1 reason the brain drain exists and will persist. I'm a proud Canadian, and all else being equal I'd rather live in Canada than the US, but one of the persistently annoying things about Canada's tech industry narrative is the continuous denial of just how far behind they are compared to the US.

branchless 11y ago
500% ? What field? I'm in Canada and earning a good wage. I could go to some hellish place like NY and live in a cardboard box and up my wage 50% (and work longer hours, with less holidays so less time with my kids). I don't see 500% as a likely pay gap for most.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  I'm in iOS dev. > "I could go to some hellish place like NY and live in a cardboard box and up my wage 50% (and work longer hours, with less holidays so less time with my kids)." I hear this a lot from Canadian colleagues who stay in Canada, and I dunno, it always irks me a little bit. Increasing your wage doesn't necessarily entail longer hours or fewer holidays. It seems like it's a popular perception in Canada to imagine all US jobs as some kind of hellish sweatshop where you're chained to your desk all day in exchange for more money - but in reality the spread of job quality is the same here as it is in some place like Toronto or Vancouver. You will find the same shitty sweatshop jobs and you will find great jobs - the pay increase seems entirely orthogonal to that. The market rate is simply higher - much higher, across the board.

serge2k 11y ago

> “We are losing our top talent, the talent at every level,” says Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “While we had that advantage, it is slipping through our fingers.” well yeah, people want to go to the states and be paid more while working on interesting things.

api_or_ipa 11y ago

The article brought my ML prof at UBC, Nando de Freitas. Absolutely stunningly brilliant, in a way that inspired deep questions in philosophy, CompSci, math and psychology. It's a shame he no longer teaches at UBC and now works at Google.