Nobelizing the Godfather of Artificial Intelligence

"He pioneered the efforts to establish deep and dense neural networks."

"[His work and that of co-laureate John Hopfield is fundamental to machine learning; Mr. Hinton is] a leading figure in the development of efficient learning algorithms."

"Today, artificial neural networks are powerful tools in research fields spanning physics, chemistry and medicine, as well as daily life."

Ellen Moons, chair, Nobel physics committee

"It was a lot of fun doing the research but it was slightly annoying that many people -- in fact, most people in the field of AI -- said that neural networks would never work."

"They were very confident that these things were just a waste of time and we would never be able to learn complicated things like, for example, understanding natural language using neural networks -- and they were wrong."

"I believe [henceforth] I'm going to spend my time advocating for people to work on safety [in the use of artificial intelligence]."

Geoffrey Hinton, professor emeritus, University of Toronto

Geoffrey Hinton, left, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, received his Nobel Prize in physics from Sweden's King Carl Gustaf on Tuesday. (Henrik Montgomery/AP)

 

Often referred to as the 'Godfather of artificial intelligence', 77-year-old artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, and with John Hopfield, a professor emeritus with Princeton University, received the Nobel Prize for physics at a ceremony in Stockholm, where the computer scientists were formally presented with their prize by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Immediately prior to the actual presentation, Nobel physics committee chair Ellen Moons addressed the gathering at the Stockholm Concert Hall.

The two scientists were co-jointly awarded the Nobel as a result of their use of physic to develop some of the architecture of machine learning, a branch of computer science developed to guide AI to mimic the way human beings learn. Professor Hinton's work which was responsible for recognizing him with the Nobel, saw completion in the 1980s. At a time when artificial intelligence was in the distant future, forecasting the technology of today.

 

Professor Hinton may have found it dispiriting to have his work disparaged by his peers in the field of AI as unworkable, but he was undeterred and went on to create the Boltzmann machine, which learns from examples and not instructions, and when trained is able to recognize familiar characteristics in information, regardless of whether it has previously been exposed to the data.

 

About $1.4 million (Canadian funds) accompanies the prize which the two -- Hinton and Hopfield -- will split. Professor Hinton has earmarked a portion of his share to Water First, an organization based in Ontario that works to further access to water for Indigenous populations, along with benefiting another charity that gives support to neurodiverse young adults. "Frontier research" is no longer in Professor Hinton's future, he stated. 

While Professor Hinton continues to be involved in the University of Toronto community, he also acts as chief scientific adviser for the Vector Institute, a Toronto-based AI research hub. He had separated himself from a role he held at Google to enable him last year to speak unfettered, respecting his concerns over the potential dangers inherent in AI. He has identified bias and discrimination, fake news, joblessness, lethal autonomous weapons and possibly the end of humanity, linked to AI's and humanity's future.

 

Students, staff and professors from the University of Toronto watch on screens as U of T professor Geoffrey Hinton receives the Nobel Prize in physics for his work in AI at a ceremony in Sweden on Tuesday. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

"[I consider my legacy as a leading AI researcher a] mixed blessing."

"I wish it was just going to be an impact for good. If it was just an impact for good it would be wonderful and I would be very satisfied. But it's not. There are a lot of risks that come with it, and we haven't done enough research to know how to control those risks."

"[As for leading AI companies, such as OpenAI, they have become] more and more concerned with short-term profit and less concerned with safety."

Geoffrey Hinton