Godfather of AI says he is proud that one of his students fired Sam Altman

Geoffrey Hinton, who is popularly referred to as the Godfather of AI, won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday. This was awarded to him by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his “foundational discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks.” In the University of Toronto press conference where Hinton discussed winning the Nobel Prize, he said that he wants to acknowledge all his students, who are all very clever, and some of them even more clever than him. But he said he is particularly proud of one of his students who fired Sam Altman.
Ilya Sutskever, who is the co-founder of OpenAI and its former chief scientist, was a student of machine learning at the University of Toronto –– where Geoffrey Hinton has taught for years –– and worked closely with the Nobel Laureate.
“I’d also like to acknowledge my students. I was particularly fortunate to have many very clever students, much clever than me, who actually make things work. They’ve gone on to do many great things. I’m particularly proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman,” said Hinton.
Sutskever played a pivotal role in the dramatic events surrounding the ousting and subsequent rehiring of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, in November last year. As a board member at the time, he initially supported Altman’s dismissal. However, just days later, Sutskever changed his stance, joining employees in signing a letter urging for Altman’s return and expressing regret over his involvement in the board’s decision to remove him.
Geoffrey Hinton has long voiced concerns about the potential risks associated with AI technology. From 2013 to 2023, Hinton worked at Google’s AI division, Google Brain, while also teaching at the University of Toronto. Among his students were Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, and Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist. Hinton made major contributions to AI’s development, working with his students to create a neural network that formed the basis for tools like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard.
In 2023, Hinton left Google, citing his growing unease over AI’s possible dangers, including its potential to spread misinformation, disrupt job markets, and pose an existential threat if true digital intelligence is achieved. He warned of AI systems surpassing human intelligence, raising concerns about their ability to manipulate people. In an interview later that year, Hinton discussed how advanced AI could leverage vast amounts of knowledge from literature and politics to become highly persuasive, potentially influencing human decisions on a significant scale.
His departure from Google marked a turning point in his mission to raise awareness about these pressing issues.