Geoffrey Hinton is one of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence, critical in the development of deep learning, backpropagation and much more. In 2024 he was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in recognition of his immense contributions to the field of computer science. Not bad for someone who started his career with the aim of understanding the human brain. Despite his role in its creation, though, Professor Hinton has been surprised by the rapid development of the technology. He’s now convinced that artificial neural networks can think, reason and understand the world in a way that could eventually be superior to our own brains.

Professor Hinton joins Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, to discuss why he thinks artificial intelligence is much more human than it seems. 

For more on this topic, check out our series on the science that built the AI revolution. We’d also recommend the most recent episode of The Weekend Intelligence, which investigated the role of the human data-labellers who made deep learning possible.

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