AI AND GEOFFREY EVEREST HINTON.

 

Geoffrey Hinton was born in 1947 and is considered as one of the pillars of Deep Learning. He is a Computer Scientist and Cognitive Psychologist noted for his work on artificial neural networks. He has published 200 peer-reviewed research papers on AI and neural networks and also guided a host of students to their PhD of which some are very well known in AI. A Neural Network is a network of connected artificial neurons, simulated within a computer and organized in layers 

He is a British Scientist who is currently located in Canada. Till the year 2018 he remained very optimistic about AI but later he moved away from that thinking as he felt that AI technologies would take away most jobs He worked for Google Brain (Google Brain was a deep learning artificial intelligence research team that served as the sole AI branch of Google before being incorporated under the newer umbrella of Google AI) for 10 years from 2013 onwards. He resigned from it in 2023 to speak freely about AI to the Public. By 2024 Hinton expressed the view that AI would generate more wealth but it would only make the rich richer and also hurt the people who lose their jobs.

Hinton is the great-great-grandson of the mathematician Mary Everest Boole and the logician George Boole. It was George Boole who first developed the Boolean Algebra which uses 0 and 1 and has been fundamental in developing Digital Electronics.  He is also the descendant of Sir George Everest, who was the then Surveyor General of India whose name has been given to Mt Everest.

George Hinton received the ‘Tuning Award” in 1918 referred to as the Nobel Prize in computing along with Yoshua Benzio and Yann LeCun (Chief AI Scientist for Meta) for Deep Learning. These 3 are often referred to as the Godfathers of Deep Learning and give public talks together. Currently, he is a Professor of Computers at the University of Toronto.  

Hinton now notes that “a part of him regrets his life’s work” due to his concerns about AI. He previously believed that AI is 30 to 50 years away but now he believes that it is only 20 years away and it would bring about drastic changes in our life comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

In 2023 Hinton said in an interview that AI might soon overtake the information capacity of the human brain. Hinton also expressed concerns about an AI takeover and that it is not inconceivable that AI could wipe out humanity. He has concerns that AI could be misused by malevolent persons.