Artificial intelligence, a developing field that promises to liken computers to the higher level of intelligence of humans, is the backbone of well-known technological discoveries, such the ability to understand human speech, self-driving cars and even automated chat-bots on a variety of websites. Although it has become quite known today, artificial intelligence was discredited in its early years. Nevertheless, behind the budding system that is used in many applications today is the cognitive psychologist and artificial intelligence researcher Geoffrey Hinton.
Born in Britain, Geoffrey Hinton began his interest in artificial intelligence while he was an undergraduate Psychology student at King's College. Already the great-great-grandson of George Boole, a significant contributor of symbolic logic used in the computer, and the great-great-great grandson of an influential surgeon, Hinton began his research with his pursuit of his PhD at an artificial intelligence program. While he was surrounded by some who desired to stimulate machine learning by a logic-centered approach to the brain, Hinton desired to learn about artificial neural networking as an human-inspired outline towards machine learning. Upon gaining his Ph.D, Dr. Hinton became a postdoctoral researcher in America to further his research in artificial neural networks. In doing so, Hinton worked with the back propagation algorithm, a formula based on machine learning over time through neural networks. Hinton's use of this formula led to the idea of "deep learning", or commonly called 'artificial intelligence' by the use of neural networks. Similar to the brain, machines would be able to cultivate representations of various items and further learn about different types of data through artificial neural networking.
Artificial neural networking, a statistical model integrated into various types of research into artificial intelligence, is based on the neural network of the brain, a system that is driven by communication between neurons through synapses. When applied to artificial intelligence, scientists desire to simulate the brain by having machines learn, not through synapses but through a multitude of switches.
During Hinton's beginnings in research however, many scientists rejected the notion of neural networking for artificial intelligence. With the extensive focus on the Perceptron, an artificial neural network project started in the 1950's for use by the United States Navy, many believed that the system would be able to "walk, talk see, write [and] reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence." After the system failed to do those things, only a few researchers held fast to the theory of neural networking for machine learning, one of which was Geoffrey Hinton. By 2012, Hinton and his researchers were able to further use the aforementioned internal representations to advance a computer's recognition of speech, which is the foundation of translation applications used in the present day.
Since the recent success of artificial intelligence, Hinton has been hailed as the Godfather of "neural nets." Since then, his research has been adopted by those who are currently focused on advancing artificial intelligence, such as technology powerhouses like Apple
These days, Hinton spends his time both at Google and at the University of Toronto, where he was recently been named as the new director of the artificial intelligence center, Vector Institute. While further advancing artificial intelligence, Hinton and his team is hoping to bridge artificial intelligence and health care in hopes of creating new technology advanced enough to distinguish cancer lesions. While artificial intelligence has a long way to go, many technological advances can be attributed to Hinton's extensive research which will, undoubtedly, pave the way into a new future.
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/u-of-t-professor-geoffrey-hinton-hailed-as-guru-of-new-era-of-computing/article34639148/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/canada/the-man-who-helped-turn-toronto-into-a-high-tech-hotbed.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&mtrref=write.2020.ws
- https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-geoffrey-hinton-ai-will-eventually-surpass-human-brain-getting-jokes-could-take-time
