Fourteenth ICPA keynote speaker Dr. Yoshua Bengio was recently awarded the Turing Award often known as the “Nobel Prize of computing.” Dr. Bengio shares this honor with his colleagues Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun together known as the “Godfathers of Artificial Intelligence.” In Montreal, last June, Dr. Bengio entitled his speech “From data to decisions with artificial intelligence .” Yoshua Bengio (computer science, 1991, McGill U; post-docs at MIT and Bell Labs, computer science professor at U. Montréal since 1993) authored three books. He has over 300 publications (h-index over 100), mostly in deep learning. He heads the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), currently the largest academic research group on deep learning. He pioneered deep learning and his goal is to uncover the principles giving rise to intelligence through learning, as well as contribute to the development of AI for the benefit of all. His presentation was a highlight of the last ICPA in Montreal.

The process leading to a definition of “Precision Agriculture” (PA) endorsed by the ISPA is in good shape. At first, a survey was completed by 80 participants to frame the key elements of a PA definition. From there, three potential definitions were proposed as seeds for the consultation step. Then, thirty-six contributors worked, under the leadership of Dr. Alex Escola from Lleida University, using a Codigital platform to gradually come at a few potential definitions out of the 17 considered in the discussions. The process generated 321 edits and 3365 votes with a final consensus rating of 82%. On average, the contributors spent 34 minutes of their time to the task. The next step is in the hands of the ISPA Board which will have to come up with a final decision on this new PA definition.

 

 

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