By: Kathleen Sandusky
8 Oct, 2024
Long-time CIFAR Fellow Geoffrey Hinton awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics
October 8, 2024
Recognition follows decades of visionary research, with Canada benefitting from early support of Hinton’s work
Geoffrey Hinton, a long-time member of the CIFAR research community, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. He shares the award jointly with John Hopfield “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
Comments Stephen Toope, the President and CEO of CIFAR, “CIFAR is delighted to congratulate Professor Geoffrey Hinton on being awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. Since the 1980s, Hinton’s scientific leadership and persistence in the development of artificial neural networks have been foundational to today’s AI revolution. CIFAR is proud to have supported Prof. Hinton’s work over the decades and we are grateful for his long-standing leadership in CIFAR’s AI research programs and in the Canadian AI ecosystem.”
Part of the CIFAR community since 1987
Geoffrey Hinton first joined the CIFAR community in 1987, as a Fellow in CIFAR’s very first program, then known as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics & Society. He had recently moved to Canada from the U.S. Newly-affiliated with the University of Toronto, and with financial support from CIFAR and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Hinton drove forward with the novel field of inquiry, which at the time had been met with widespread skepticism and an episodic dearth of funding, now known as the “AI winters.”
In a 1992 special article in Scientific American, Hinton, who was at the time appointed the Noranda Fellow at CIFAR, wrote a passionate defense of the concept of artificial neural networks. “…Sooner or later,” he wrote, “computational studies of learning in artificial neural networks will converge on the methods discovered by evolution. When that happens, a lot of diverse empirical data about the brain will suddenly make sense, and many new applications of artificial neural networks will become feasible.”
The AI winter thaws: Launching CIFAR’s Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception program
Consensus on the feasibility of artificial neural networks would indeed soon change, with the support of CIFAR and fellow researchers who saw the field’s potential. In 2004, Hinton and collaborators including Yoshua Bengio and David Fleet, among others, successfully proposed the launch of a new program at CIFAR, Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception (or NCAP, which today is named Learning in Machines & Brains). Hinton would go on to lead NCAP for ten years. The program proposal outlined the objectives “to use insights from a broad range of disciplines to fully realize how the brain learns and interprets visual information and to use these insights to build computer systems and machines that are capable of learning in ways similar to humans.”
The list of early NCAP members reads as a who’s who of today’s leading scientists in the field. Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun would go on to share with Hinton the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their development of deep learning. Other early international researchers drawn to the program, many of whom are still CIFAR Fellows, include Andrew Ng (who would go on to co-found DeepLearning), Sebastian Seung (now President at Samsung Electronics and Head of Samsung Research), Max Welling (today Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm Netherlands) and Ruslan Salakhutdinov (former director of AI research at Apple).
Canada’s AI community strengthens and grows
Canadian representation in the NCAP program included senior AI researchers Richard Zemel, Brendan Frey, Nando De Freitas and David Fleet. By 2005, recognizing the opportunity to jumpstart a new generation of AI research, the program launched its first summer school, then called the Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception Summer School. Modelled after the Connectionist Models Summer School Hinton had led at the University of California at San Diego, the intensive week-long session was held in Toronto with 28 competitively selected participants.
In the 20 years since, the summer school now known as the Deep Learning + Reinforcement Learning Summer School has grown to become a celebrated launching pad for the careers of thousands of AI researchers, with over 2,700 alumni.
Hinton’s decades of leadership in the Canadian AI ecosystem
As the Canadian cluster of researchers in AI and machine learning continued to grow, the Canadian government took notice of a remarkable opportunity for Canadian-led innovation with potential for social and economic impact.
In 2016, a group of leaders from across the Canadian AI ecosystem, including Geoffrey Hinton, provided advice to CIFAR and the Government of Canada as they were developing the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Canada’s national AI research and talent strategy that was the first of its kind in the world. Through the Strategy, CIFAR collaborated in the launch of Canada’s three National AI Institutes (Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal and the Vector Institute in Toronto). In addition to being co-founder, Hinton has served as Chief Scientific Advisor at the Vector Institute since its launch in 2017.
“Geoffrey Hinton’s leadership at the Vector Institute and in CIFAR’s Learning in Machines & Brains program has been invaluable to the Canadian AI ecosystem,” says Elissa Strome, Executive Director of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. “This recognition by the Nobel Committee of Professor Hinton’s outstanding contributions is a testament to the value of investing in great people with great ideas and the pursuit of ambitious, curiosity-based science, which is at the heart of CIFAR’s mission.”
The next horizon: anticipating and addressing the societal impacts of AI
Today, driven by the profound societal impacts of artificial intelligence, the members of CIFAR’s Learning in Machines & Brains program, which includes Geoffrey Hinton, have expanded their inquiry to address complex ethical issues in research and training environments and in the implementation of AI. Among other research questions, the areas of focus include exploring existing and future societal implications of AI research and addressing issues in AI research and implementation, including privacy, accountability and transparency.
Similarly, many of the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs recruited and retained in Canada through the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy have expanded their fields of inquiry into issues related to AI safety and responsible deployment. This year, the Canadian government announced funding for an AI Safety Institute, with details to come soon.
Hinton himself has shifted much of his time and advocacy to helping to prepare the world for the widespread societal impacts of the new transformational technology that he helped create.
Advocating for a greatly increased focus on research that will improve responsible human control of AI and advance AI safety, Hinton said in a recent interview with the University of Toronto, “Look at how many people are working on making these things better and how many people are working on preventing them from getting out of control.” Noting that the priorities at big tech companies tend to skew to the former group, he added: “Where could you make the most impact?”
Related Articles
-
Three 2024 Nobel Laureates among CIFAR’s acclaimed community of researchers
October 15, 2024
-
Racing for cause
June 13, 2024
-
Meet the 2022-2024 cohort of CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars
June 07, 2022
-
CNN | This website helps you imagine what extreme climate change will do to your home
October 14, 2021