This week, Geoffrey Hinton took the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on artificial neural networks, which is why people call him the “godfather of AI”
In a speech on Tuesday, Professor Hinton praised a student (referring to Ilya Sutskever, who used to be OpenAI’s Chief Scientist) for speaking out against the company’s CEO.
Hinton said, “I was very lucky to have many very smart students—much smarter than me—who made things work.” “They did great things after that.” That one of my students fired Sam Altman makes me very happy.
By this, Hinton means the November 2023 vote by OpenAI’s board to fire Altman. Sutskever told Altman the news over a video call but later said he felt bad about it. It looks like Hinton saw the firing of OpenAI’s CEO as a victory for AI safety, which he often fights for. Win was short-lived, though, because Altman now has more power over OpenAI than before, and he might soon get stuck.
