Faculty, students and staff across the University of Toronto’s three campuses gathered Tuesday to watch professor emeritus and artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton receive his Nobel Prize.
Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” was bestowed the Nobel Prize in physics by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm, alongside co-laureate John Hopfield, a professor emeritus at Princeton University.
Nobel physics committee chair Ellen Moons said during an address that the pair’s work is considered to be fundamental to machine learning and called Hinton “a leading figure in the development of efficient learning algorithms.”
“He pioneered the efforts to establish deep and dense neural networks. Such networks are effective in sorting and interpreting large amounts of data and self-improve based on the accuracy of the result,” Moons said.
“Today, artificial neural networks are powerful tools in research fields spanning physics, chemistry and medicine, as well as in daily life.”
The Nobel committee first announced in October that Hinton would receive the coveted award. Some of those who attended watch parties at U of T on Tuesday said the honour generated a surge of enthusiasm at the school.
“There has been a lot of excitement and a lot of pride,” said Michael Guerzhoy, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at the university and a former student of Hinton’s.
Guerzhoy said Hinton’s influence was instrumental in setting him on his career path. Guerzhoy added a key part of Hinton’s legacy is an “enthusiastic approach to science about following your idea through and seeing it to the end.”
“It doesn’t always work out, but obviously Professor Hinton provided the great example that we all try to follow, to the extent that we can,” he said.
50 years of perseverance
Hinton was awarded the Nobel because his use of physics developed some of the underpinnings of machine learning, a branch of computer science that helps AI mimic how humans learn. The work that ultimately earned Hinton the Nobel was completed in the 1980s, when AI was far from the buzzy technology it is today.
In recent interviews, Hinton has reflected on the fact that many colleagues throughout the years doubted his work would lead to any breakthroughs.
“This is the result of, 50 years ago, having an idea of a problem that needed to be solved and just sticking with it even though most people in the field of AI and computer science said that what we were doing was nonsense,” he told CBC News Network on Tuesday.
Yet Hinton persevered and eventually created the Boltzmann machine, which learns from examples rather than instructions and, when trained, can recognize familiar characteristics in information, even if it has not seen that data before.
This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics is Geoffrey Hinton, a British Canadian known as the ‘godfather of AI.’ He speaks with CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton about how governments should regulate the technology and its use in election campaigns.
Hinton, born in Britain and now 77, has spent the last decade splitting his time between teaching computer science at U of T and working for Google’s deep-learning artificial intelligence team, before announcing his resignation from the Alphabet company in 2023.
He says he left Google so he could speak more openly about the dangers of AI, which he has said include bias and discrimination, fake news, joblessness, lethal autonomous weapons and even the end of humanity. Hinton says priority must be placed on finding safeguards for the technology.
“I should have been thinking about safety sooner. I was always thought AI was a long way off — that is, AI as intelligent as people — and now I think it’s much closer. So I wish I had thought about the risks and how we address them sooner,” he told CBC News Network.
Hinton called his 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,” he said. “There are a lot of risks that come with it, and we haven’t done enough research to know how to control those risks.”
Hinton was also critical of leading AI companies, such as OpenAI, saying they have become “more and more concerned with short-term profit and less concerned with safety.”
An inspiration to students at U of T
Hinton remains involved in the U of T community and is a chief scientific adviser for the Vector Institute, a Toronto-based AI research hub.
Timothy Chan, a professor of industrial engineering and associate vice president of strategic initiatives at U of T, said Hinton’s Nobel win will help further burnish the reputation of the institution around the world.
“We were already known as an AI hub, an AI leader, globally, and a magnet to attract the best students and faculty to Toronto. And I think this just helps to accelerate that, that attractiveness, and it really helps elevate our profile,” he said.
Guerzhoy said Hinton in an inspiration to generations of computer scientists.
“I think a lot of students are hopeful to follow Professor Hinton’s path and achieve great things in technology and artificial intelligence,” he said.
“I think U of T is one of the centres of artificial intelligence and where a lot of students want to work in artificial intelligence, and I think this is in large part to Professor Hinton’s credit.”
The Nobel prize comes with 11 million Swedish kronor — about $1.4 million Canadian dollars — from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
Hinton and Hopfield will split the money, with some of Hinton’s share going to Water First, an Ontario organization working to boost Indigenous access to water, and another unnamed charity supporting neurodiverse young adults.