NSERC/Intact Financial Industrial Research Chair in Machine Learning for Insurance

François Laviolette

Thierry Badard

Marie-Pier Côté

Christian Gagné

Richard Khoury

Luc Lamontagne

Mario Marchand

Today, data analysis is at the heart of several new technologies. Just think of the Google's driverless car, SpaceX's autonomous rocket, intelligent personal assistants like Siri or Alexa, or even Microsoft's HoloLens. These Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have one thing in common: they rely on learning algorithms machine. For many applications, the end result is paramount, but some others also require that a human beings can understand how the AI algorithm makes its decisions. In these cases, the information regarding decision-end mechanisms is aimed at build confidence in the system and verify decisions taken algorithm. For Intact, our industrial partner, different legal and ethical considerations require an understanding of the rules that underpin these decisions.

Big data has brought several opportunities linked to the availability of new sources of information such as social media, traffic reports, text documents and image banks. To cope with the international competition, companies need to exploit these data to better connect with their and better understand their needs. They also need these AI algorithms to not show up in the form of a black box that we listen to without understanding.

This Industrial Research Chair project will be done in collaboration with Intact Insurance, a leading Canadian insurance industry, and the Big Data Research Centre of Université Laval. The chair will focus on the development of interpretable AI algorithms which will promote their application in the insurance sector as well as many other industries Canadian services sector, which are starting a "big data" shift.

Collaborators: Thierry Badard, Luc Lamontagne, Christian Gagné, Richard Khoury, Mario Marchand, Frédéric Hubert, Marie-Pier Côté and Pascal Germain.

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