I'm a former AI researcher (studied at Waterloo, MIT and Carnegie Mellon), now turned business exec. I just wanted to say that everything that they said in this article rings true.   The US Schools had significantly more funding and a critical cluster of researchers even through several of the most key breakthroughs happened right here in Toronto.  Without that critical mass the gains don't sustain themselves because the researchers move elsewhere. Funding a world-leading institute is the kind of change that could reverse that.