Dr Geoffrey Hinton – the godfather of Neural Networks
This BBC interview from May 2024 reveals the thinking of one of the most senior experts on Ai – a man who is considered to be the ‘Godfather’ of Ai, and was recently awarded the Nobel prize in Physics because of this work on Neural networks and Deep Learning.
Professor Hinton’s belief is that Ai is not simply a tool, instead it is a something that will, within a short space of time, be able to out-think and out-smart most, if not all, humans. Unlike tools that require a human operator, or respond to a set of rules, Ai will become self governing and self motivated.
For the first time in known human history, we face the prospect of no longer being the most intelligent on the planet.
This interview is well worth watching, and should be a wake up call for those who are asleep to the many possibilities of Ai.
On October 8, 2024, Geoffrey Hinton was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with John Hopfield, for their foundational work in developing neural networks and their impact on modern physics and computational neuroscience. Hinton is known as the ‘Godfather’ of Ai.
During the 1980s, Ai research turned away from neural networks, believing that it was a dead end. Instead of following the crowd with their rule based systems, Hinton continued refining his models, pursuing new approaches to make them more efficient and powerful. His persistence eventually paid off. With the rise of more powerful computing resources in the 2000s, particularly the use of GPUs for deep learning, neural networks experienced a resurgence—ushering in the era of deep learning and transforming AI as we know it today.
Deep learning now underpins some of the most sophisticated technologies in the world, from autonomous vehicles to advanced language models like GPT. And Hinton’s contributions have been at the heart of these advancements.
In 2018, Hinton, along with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, received the Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” for their pioneering work in deep learning.
In 2023 Hinton left his senior role at Google so that he could speak more freely about his concerns about Ai.
When watching the video, bear in mind that it is a year old (2023), and since then Ai has evolved a great deal more. In particular several of the aspects he discusses that at the time were futuristic are now a reality.
One notable quote is when Hinton says; ‘We have developed immortal beings but there’s no immortality for humans’. In the video he makes comparisons is between biological intelligence and digital intelligence, explaining that digital intelligence not only has ‘immortality’ but that it can be easily replicated, far outstripping the development of human’s biological intelligence.