Hugo Larochelle has been appointed the new scientific director of Mila, Montréal’s artificial intelligence (AI) institute, filling a role once held by his former academic supervisor, Yoshua Bengio.

Larochelle succeeds Laurent Charlin, associate professor at HEC Montréal, who took over as interim scientific director in May after Bengio moved to an advisor role. The new director is an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal and the former head of the Google Brain research lab in the city.

“I view AI as a key for bringing more intelligence into our economy.”

In an interview with BetaKit, Larochelle said his priorities are to maintain Mila’s “high calibre of research” in AI, help professors and students commercialize their work, and support the creation of new startups.

“I think we

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