'Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton receives Nobel Prize in physics

TORONTO -

As artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton strode across a Stockholm stage to receive his Nobel Prize for physics, the pride back home was palpable.

A hearty crowd of about 100 students and colleagues at the University of Toronto, where Hinton is a professor emeritus, gathered Tuesday at the downtown campus to watch the British-Canadian computer scientist and his co-laureate, John Hopfield, receive their award.

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The pair were being given the accolade because their use of physics developed some of the underpinnings of machine learning, a branch of computer science that helps AI mimic how humans learn.

When Hinton, clad in a dark suit and white bow tie, approached King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden to retrieve his diploma and gold medal, applause rang out across the lobby of the school's Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus. There were even a few tears.

"There is, at least for me, this sense that Prof. Hinton created the whole ecosystem here, where there are thousands of people who are working on his ideas," said Michael Guerzhoy, one of Hinton's former students who went on to teach a course Hinton had once led at the university.

The idea that earned Hinton the Nobel dates back to the 1980s, when he was working at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and AI was far from the buzzy technology it is today.

It was then that Hinton developed 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 work was so key to the world of AI that Nobel physics committee chair Ellen Moons said Hinton is now considered "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, when presenting Hinton to the King to receive his award.

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

The Nobel that Hinton scoops up 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.

Hinton, now 77 after celebrating his birthday last week, has said he doesn't plan to do much more "frontier research."

He remains involved in the U of T community and is a chief scientific adviser for the Vector Institute, a Toronto-based AI research hub.

"I believe I'm going to spend my time advocating for people to work on safety," he said in October.

Last year, Hinton left a role he held at Google to more freely speak 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.

At a Stockholm press conference over the weekend, he said he doesn't regret the work he did that laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, but wishes he thought of safety sooner.

"In the same circumstances, I would do the same again," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2024.