Biography of Geoffrey Hinton; The godfather of artificial intelligence

Geoffrey Hinton (Geoffrey Hinton), a scientist who has rightly been called the “Godfather of Artificial Intelligence”, created a revolution in the world of technology with his research. Inspired by the human brain, he built artificial neural networks and gave machines the ability to learn, think, and make decisions. These technologies that are everywhere in our lives today, from voice assistants to self-driving cars, are the result of the relentless efforts of Hinton and his colleagues.

Hinton is now recognized as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, having won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. But his story goes beyond awards and honors.

Geoffrey Hinton’s story is a story of perseverance, innovation, and the constant search to discover the unknown. In this article, we will look at the life and achievements of Geoffrey Hinton and we will answer the question of how one person with a simple idea was able to revolutionize the world of technology.

Hinton was born on December 6, 1947, in England in an educated and famous family with a rich scientific background. Most of his family members were educated in mathematics and economics. His father, Howard Everest Hinton, was a prominent entomologist, and all his siblings had done important scientific research.

Hinton took a diverse academic path; He began his primary education at Clifton College in Bristol and then went to Cambridge University for further studies. There, Hinton constantly changed his major, vacillating between the natural sciences, art history, and philosophy. Finally, he graduated from Cambridge University in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology.

Hinton’s interest in understanding the brain and how humans learn led him to study artificial intelligence. Therefore, he went to the University of Edinburgh to continue his studies, where he began research in the field of artificial intelligence under his mentor, Christopher Longuet-Higgins. Finally, in 1978, Hinton achieved his seven-year-old dream and received his doctorate in artificial intelligence. The PhD was a turning point in Hinton’s career and prepared him to enter the complex and fascinating world of artificial intelligence.

Hinton’s diverse education, from psychology to artificial intelligence, gave him a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective that greatly contributed to his future research. This perspective enabled him to make a deep connection between the functioning of the human brain and machine learning algorithms.

Hinton decided to enter the field of physiology and study the anatomy of the human brain in his undergraduate course due to his great interest in learning about the workings of the human mind. After that, he entered the field of psychology and finally entered the field of artificial intelligence and completed his studies. His goal in entering the field of artificial intelligence was to simulate the human brain and use it in artificial intelligence.

If you want to learn about the functioning of a complex device like the human brain, you have to build one like it.

– Geoffrey Hinton

Hinton believed that in order to have a deep understanding of a complex device like the brain, one should build a device similar to it. For example, we normally think we are familiar with how cars work, but when building a car we will notice many details that we had no knowledge of before building it.

In the late 1960s, Rosenblatt’s colleague wrote a book about the limitations of Rosenblatt’s neural network. After that, for about ten years, research in the field of neural networks and artificial intelligence almost stopped. No one wanted to work in this field, because they were sure that no clear results would be obtained. Of course, nobody might not be the right word, and it is better to say almost nobody; Because the topic of artificial intelligence and neural network was completely different for Hinton.

Hinton believed that there must be a way to simulate the human brain and make a device similar to it. He had no doubt about it. Why did Hinton want to pursue a path that few would follow and almost no one saw a happy ending for? Thinking that everyone makes mistakes, this eminent scientist continued on his way and did not give up.

Hinton went to different research institutes in America during his research. At that time, the US Department of Defense funded many US research institutions, so most of the projects carried out or underway focused on military objectives. Hinton was not interested in working in the military field and was looking for pure scientific research and the development of technology for human and general applications. As a result, he was looking for a place where he could continue his research away from the pressures of the military and the limitations of dependent funds.

I did not want my research to be funded by military organizations, because the results obtained would certainly not be used for human benefit.

– Geoffrey Hinton

After searching for a suitable place to continue research, Canada seemed to be the most suitable option. Finally, Hinton moved to Canada in 1987 and began his research at the University of Toronto. In the same years, Hinton and his colleagues were able to solve problems that simpler neural networks could not solve by building more complex neural networks.

Hinton and his colleagues developed multilayer neural networks instead of building and expanding single-layer neural networks. These neural networks worked well and drew a null line on all disappointments and failures. In the late 80s, a person named Dean Pomerleau built a self-driving car using a neural network and drove it on different roads.

In the 1990s, Yann LeCun, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and deep learning, developed a system called “Convolutional Neural Networks” (CNNs). These networks became the basis for many modern techniques in machine vision and pattern recognition. One of the first important applications of these networks was to build a system that could recognize handwritten digits; But once again, after the construction of this system, researchers in the field of artificial intelligence reached a dead end.

From the 1990s to 2000, Hinton was the only hopeful person on the planet who still believed in the development of neural networks and artificial intelligence. Hinton attended many conferences to achieve his goal but was usually met with indifference by the attendees and treated like an outcast. You might think to yourself that Hinton never gave up and moved on with hope, but that’s not the case. He was also sometimes disappointed and doubted reaching the desired result; But by overcoming despair, he continued his way no matter how difficult it was; Because this sentence kept repeating in Hinton’s mind: “Computers can learn.”

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Google Scholar

Finally, in May 2023, after about 10 years of working with Google, Hinton resigned from his job at the company because he wanted to speak freely about the dangers of the commercial use of artificial intelligence. Hinton was concerned about the power of artificial intelligence to generate fake content and its impact on the job market. Next, we read a part of Hinton’s words in an interview in 2023:

I think we’ve entered an era where, for the first time, we have things that are more talented than us. Artificial intelligence understands and has talent. This advanced system has its own experiences and can make decisions based on those experiences. Currently, artificial intelligence does not have self-awareness, but over time, it will acquire this feature. There will even come a time when humans are the second most talented creatures on earth. Artificial intelligence came to fruition after many disappointments and failures.

– Geoffrey Hinton

The supervisor of the doctoral course asked me to work on another subject and not to jeopardize my future work, but I preferred to learn about the functioning of the human brain and mind and simulate it, even if I fail. It took longer than I expected, about 50 years, to achieve the result.

At one point, the reporter asks Hinton at what point did you come to the conclusion that your idea about neural networks is right and everyone else is wrong? “I’ve always thought I was right, and I’m right,” Hinton replies with a pause and a smile.

With the advent of ultra-high-speed chips and the vast amount of data generated on the Internet, Hinton’s algorithms have reached magical power. Little by little, computers were able to recognize the content of photos, even later they were able to easily recognize sound and translate from one language to another. In 2012, words like neural networks and machine learning became the main words on the front page of the New York Times.

Read more: The biography of Ida Lovelace; The first programmer in history

As one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton has been recognized many times for his outstanding achievements. He has received numerous awards including the David E. Rommelhart of the Cognitive Science Society and Canada’s Gerhard Hertzberg Gold Medal, which is Canada’s highest science and engineering honor.

One of Hinton’s most notable honors was winning the Turing Award with his colleagues in 2018. This is a prestigious award in the field of computing, so it is referred to as the Nobel of Computing. This award was given in recognition of Hinton’s continuous efforts in the development of neural networks. In 2022, another honor was added to Hinton’s honors, when he received the Royal Society Medal for his pioneering work in deep learning.

2024 was a historic year for Geoffrey Hinton. He and John Hopfield won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their amazing achievements in the field of machine learning and artificial neural networks. The Nobel Committee awarded this valuable prize to these two scientists for their fundamental discoveries and inventions that made machine learning with artificial neural networks possible. When awarding the prize, the development of the “Boltzmann machine” was specifically mentioned.

When a New York Times reporter asked Hinton to explain in simple terms the importance of the Boltzmann machine and its role in pretraining post-propagation networks, Hinton jokingly referred to a quote from Richard Feynman :

Look, my friend, if I could explain this in a few minutes, it wouldn’t be worth a Nobel Prize.

– Richard Feynman

This humorous response shows that this technology is very complex and its full understanding requires extensive knowledge and study. Boltzmann machine is one of the first neural network models (1985), which as a statistical model helps the network to automatically find patterns in data.

Geoffrey Hinton is a man who turned the dream of machine intelligence into a reality by standing against the currents. From back pain to receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics, his life path was always full of ups and downs. With steely determination and perseverance, Hinton not only became one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century but also changed the world of technology forever with the invention of artificial neural networks. His life story is an inspiration to all who pursue their dreams, even when the whole world is against them.

Everything about Cybercube and Robo Van; Elon Musk’s robotic taxis

Tesla

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These cars can park automatically, recognize stop signs and other road signs as well as traffic lights, and slow down if necessary. Blind spot monitoring, automatic switching between road lanes, and intelligent summoning of the car by mobile application are some other features of these cars.

Despite all security measures, all Tesla Autopilot cars still require driver supervision according to national laws and the company’s own announcement. For this reason, until this company provides new specifications and information about the sensors, cameras, and systems of the robot taxis, no expert can check their efficiency or risk.

Tesla

The app looks like a standard online ride-hailing app, but there’s no mention of the robotic nature of the car, which does all the driving automatically and autonomously. Elon Musk said in the same meeting:

You can think of Tesla’s robotaxis as a combination of Uber and Airbnb.

According to Musk, part of the fleet of robotic cars will belong to Tesla and the other part will belong to consumers. The owners of this group of robotic cars can give their cars to the taxi fleet whenever they want and earn money in this way.

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Scheduling robotaxis requires technological advances and regulatory approvals, but considering their very high potential value, we intend to make the most of this opportunity and are working hard on the project.

Elon Musk also did not respond to a question about exactly what type of regulatory approval Tesla is seeking.

He was then asked by reporters if Tesla was seeking an exemption from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to develop and market a car without traditional controls. In response, Musk compared Tesla’s new product to Waymo’s local self-driving cars and said that products that are developed for local transportation are very vulnerable and weak. He added:

The car we produce is a universal product that works anywhere. Our robotaxis work well on any terrain.

Currently, car manufacturers must comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards that require human controls such as steering wheels, pedals, side mirrors, and the like. These standards specify how vehicles must be designed before they can be sold in the United States, and if a manufacturer’s new product does not meet these requirements, manufacturers can apply for an exemption; But the US government has set a limit of 2,500 cars per company per year.

The regulatory exemption cap would theoretically prevent the mass deployment of purpose-built self-driving vehicles from any AV company, including Tesla. To date, self-driving car advocates have tried hard to pass legislation to cap the number of driverless cars on public roads; But the bill is apparently stalled in Congress due to questions about the technology’s “level of reliability” and readiness.

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In the second stage, Tesla’s self-driving cars are equipped with advanced technologies such as a variety of cameras and sensors and data processing systems, which, apart from the cost of production, also increase the cost of maintaining equipment and keeping software up-to-date.

In the past year alone, some Tesla customers have been forced to pay an extra $12,000 to upgrade their cars’ self-driving capabilities, while there’s still no news of new features.

If we consider the average price of robotaxis between 150,000 and 175,000 dollars, it is not clear how long Elon Musk’s promise to potential buyers about the revenue-generating potential of these cars will take. Unfortunately, Musk’s prediction regarding the annual gross profit of 30,000 dollars for the owners who give their cars to other passengers does not have statistical and computational support.

In addition to paying attention to technological and legal issues, Tesla must gain people’s trust in its new series of fully automatic and driverless cars, and for this purpose, it will be necessary to hold advertising campaigns and extensive training programs to familiarize consumers with the company’s technologies and reduce the concerns of end users. was

Tesla

All the cars that Tesla produces have all the necessary hardware and computing for fully autonomous driving. I’ll say it again: all Tesla cars currently in production have all the prerequisites for autonomous driving. All you have to do is improve the software.

He also said that it doesn’t matter if these cars are less safe than new cars, because Tesla is improving the average level of road safety. A few weeks later, he released another video in which he summarized meeting Tesla’s goals in three steps:

• Completing the technological features and capabilities of fully autonomous vehicles
• Improving car technology to the point where people can ride driverless cars without any worries
• Convincing the regulators that the previous option is true!

While other companies producing self-driving cars go from city to city to obtain the necessary permits and try to expand the range of activities of cars by proving the safety of their products, NBC recently revealed in its report that Tesla even the states of California and Nevada, which employ the most employees. has not received a license to test these cars.

Some critics say that it is not possible for Elon Musk’s robot taxi to be produced and released according to his schedule. Referring to Waymo vehicles that make 50,000 road trips every week, this group considers Tesla’s silence regarding the request for technical information of the vehicles unacceptable. From their point of view, Musk is just continuing to make vague promises about this car.

In response to critics, Elon Musk emphasizes one sentence: that Tesla is basically an artificial intelligence and robotics company, not a traditional automobile company. So why doesn’t he try to clarify the obstacles that stand in the way of Tesla’s actions to realize the old idea?

On the other hand, the technology academies remind that Tesla’s systems have not reached level 5 autonomy, that is, conditions that do not require any human control. The MIT Technology Review writes:

After years of research and testing of robotic taxis by various companies on the road, mass production of these cars still has heavy risks. To date, these vehicles only travel within precise, pre-defined geographic boundaries, and although some do not have a human operator in the front seat, they still require remote operators to take over in an emergency.

R. Amanarayan Vasudevan , associate professor of robotics and mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, also says:

These systems still rely on remote human supervision for safe operation, which is why we call them automated rather than autonomous; But this version of self-driving is much more expensive than traditional taxis.

Tesla is burning direct investor money to produce robotaxis, and it is natural that more pressure will be placed on the company to get more reliable results. The balance between costs and potential revenues will come when more robotaxis hit the roads and can truly compete with ride-sharing services like Uber.

Despite numerous legal, infrastructural and social challenges, the unveiling ceremony of Cybercube and RoboVon puts not only the technology levels of self-driving cars but the entire transportation industry on the threshold of a huge transformation. The entry of Tesla’s robotic taxis into the market can even affect the traditional taxi service model, but how long will it take for the transition from this unveiling to the actual launch

How do we know that our phone is infected with malware?

Today’s smartphones are not just a means to communicate with others, for many of us, they are a personal notebook, a family photo and movie album, a mobile bank, and a device for storing important daily information. These cases clearly remind us of the high importance of taking care of the phone and paying attention to the security of the information stored in this device.

Android and iOS operating systems become more secure with each update; But again, it is possible that due to reasons such as rooting the Android phone or jailbreaking the iPhone phone, we expose our phone to malware that in many cases enters the victim’s devices with the aim of stealing information and causing financial losses. .

Although hackers very cleverly infect victims’ phones with their desired malware, after the device is infected, there are changes in the normal operation of your phone, and by identifying them and contacting a repairman in time, you can remove the malware from your phone and prevent serious damage. Next, join us to get to know the 7 signs that indicate your phone is infected with malware and learn how to get rid of it.

If your phone has recently experienced one or more of the following problems, it is likely that a malware is active on your phone:

Many malware are usually designed to run permanently in the background of the phone and send personal information or files from the victim’s device to the hacker or download malicious files and hide them in certain parts of the phone. do This process is one reason for the phone’s internet to run out early because it increases the device’s internet usage unexpectedly to the point where, with a little precision, you can notice the difference between your usage in the current time period and, for example, the last week or month.

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To find out how much data is being used on your mobile phone (SIM card internet), go to one of the two paths below and see exactly how much internet each app consumes and if this amount is in line with what you expect from that app’s functionality. Does it match or not?

Information about the amount of internet usage on the Android phone

• Enter Settings.
• Tap the Connections option.

• Go to Data usage and Mobile data usage respectively.

Information about the amount of internet usage on the iPhone

• Enter Settings.
• Tap on Cellular and Cellular Data respectively.

If the Internet consumption by an application is much more than you expect or that application should not connect to the Internet, it is better to consider the application as malware and delete it from your phone.

Most cybercriminals design mobile malware with the goal of making money. Part of this revenue is generated by displaying strange random ads (for example, immoral sites) on victims’ phones. This type of advertisement, known as adware, directs victims to certain sites that are either designed to steal more information from the person, are phishing in nature, or encourage the victim to download malicious software and install it on their phone or even computer.

In addition, displaying multiple ads on your phone slows down the phone; A process that puts a lot of pressure on the battery and other hardware of the device; Of course, this is in the most optimistic scenario. If you click on these ads and don’t use IP masking tools (such as a VPN), there is a risk that your IP will be exposed to the cybercriminals behind this malware. Then, in addition to infecting your phone, you have to worry about the dangerous things hackers are doing with your IP.

Quick battery drain

If you have made sure of the health of your phone’s battery using Android or iPhone battery health testing methods, or if you have recently replaced the phone’s battery, but still have to charge it several times during the day, you should consider the possibility that the phone is infected with malware. The 24-hour running of malware in the background of the phone increases battery consumption to a great extent, and in addition to draining the battery quickly, it can increase the temperature of the device body.

It is normal for the apps installed on the phone to crash occasionally and it may happen for various reasons, including the app not being up-to-date; But this process should not be repeated constantly. If, in a short period of time, a significant number of apps on your phone freeze, don’t work as expected, close suddenly, or stop working completely, and won’t go back to their previous state even with an update, the hypothesis that your phone is a is infected with malware; is strengthened

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In addition, if the phone restarts automatically and the process of loading the phone’s user interface after startup takes longer than before, it could be a sign of malware in your phone that restarts the phone every time it stops working and restarts in the background. The phone should run.

It doesn’t matter if you are doing simple tasks with your phone or playing games and heavy software is running; If your phone is infected with malware, the body of the phone will become abnormally hot. This heat will not only prevent you from working with the phone, but by damaging the hardware of the device, it will slow down its performance when running your favorite programs.

In any case, sudden heat generation in the body of the device that was not there before or was not present at this intensity is a serious alarm about the possibility of malware in your phone and you should show your phone to a professional repairer as soon as possible.

Besides executing commands to send your information to their designers, malware may also download and install new apps on your phone. These programs may seem harmless on the surface (for example, they look like an exercise training program), but ultimately, they are not installed on your device with good intentions and often do things like track your traffic and display numerous advertisements intended by malware designers or in Worse, they steal your personal and sensitive information (such as passwords to social media accounts).

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Be aware that most of these unknown and new apps usually have unreasonable permissions that allow them to access sensitive parts of the phone such as contacts, gallery, storage (phone and memory card), camera and microphone.

Malware communication on a phone or the malware designers’ server interferes with your phone’s ability to maintain a stable connection to the Internet or prevent call drops. If other devices that use the same Wi-Fi connection as you do not face the problem of unstable Internet connection, or if in the area where you are present, the SIM card antenna of other phones has no problem, you should suspect the possibility of your phone being infected with malware.

If you see one or more of these symptoms on your phone and you suspect that your phone is infected with malware, you can identify the malware infecting your device and remove it through the following methods:

1. Removing malware from the phone through Safe Mode

Since most malware runs continuously in the background of the phone and closing them forcibly is not possible in some cases; It is better to delete the programs you suspect from your phone through Safe Mode. Android’s Safe Mode feature allows you to run the phone only with default system apps.

To enter Safe Mode on most Android phones, press and hold the Power button until the phone turns on and enters Safe Mode settings. In this mode, all the apps you have installed on the phone will be disabled and you can safely remove anything unusual and suspicious you see or apps you feel are infected from the phone.

If you are using an iPhone, turn off the phone first to enter Safe Mode, similar to Android phones. After that, press and hold the power button for a few seconds. After the device turns on, press and hold the Volume Down button until the Apple logo appears on the screen, then release it to enter Safe Mode. Keep in mind that, unlike Android phones, different models of iPhones are equipped with a feature called Lockdown Mode, by which, if the phone is targeted by malware or hackers, the functionality of the device will be limited until you remove this malware.

2. Install antivirus

Be careful not to use free antiviruses as much as possible, as many of these programs either don’t provide the functionality you need or are just malware hiding behind the title of antivirus.

3. Restore the phone to factory settings

Some malware, for reasons such as being new, may not be detectable even by the most up-to-date versions of antiviruses, and despite installing several strong antiviruses, you may still struggle with one or more of the symptoms we mentioned at the beginning of the article. In this case, you will have no choice but to restore the phone to factory settings.

If you have important information and have already saved a backup copy of the phone data, to restore the iPhone to its factory settings, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone tap Reset, and select Reset All Settings to reset all the phone data. delete

In Android devices, the path to the factory reset option may be different in different brands. For example, if your phone is a Samsung, you can restore your phone to factory settings as follows:

• Go to Settings and click on Reset from the General Management section.
• Select the Factory Data Reset option.

Contrary to what some people think, most malware is designed with the intention of causing serious harm to victims, and they usually do so within the first hours and days of entering the victim’s machine. Since many of us, due to ignorance of the signs of the phone being infected with malware, find out about the presence of malicious software in our phone late, sometimes even removing the malware does not have a special effect on the phone’s performance; Because this malware has already caused the damage desired by cybercriminals.

This shows the importance of being vigilant and careful to prevent malware from entering the phone. Observing these things can help you achieve such a goal so that you can better protect the security of your phone:

1. Download your favorite apps from Google Play or App Store

Many users, eager to use modded versions of a paid program, download that program from unknown sites and easily expose their phones to the risk of being infected by malware. Hence, it is essential to download Android and iOS apps only from Google Play or App Store. Fortunately, sometimes some paid apps become free for a limited time and you can install them instead of the modded version. At Zomit, we regularly feature paid Android and iPhone apps that have become free today.

2. Pay attention to the opinions of other users about a program

Showing excessive and unusual ads, not providing the functionality claimed by the creators, constantly crashing the program or directing the user to links outside the program are among the alarm bells of suspected malware programs that are often written by users in the comments section of a program. They can be a good clue to dissuade you from downloading that program.

3. Pay attention to the permissions of each program

Suspicious access that doesn’t need to be requested for certain apps can be a red flag for you. For example, if you download a reader app, it shouldn’t ask you to access the camera, audience, or gallery.

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4. Do not download files from unknown devices

If you keep your phone’s Bluetooth on continuously due to using wireless headphones or Bluetooth hands-free, or the device’s AirDrop is always on, you should not accept files from unknown devices; Because this file (even in the form of a photo) may spread some kind of malware in your phone.

This includes receiving emails from unknown sources. Although you cannot prevent receiving these types of emails; if you receive them, you should not open these emails on your phone or computer and it is better to delete them immediately and block the sender of the email.

Read more: How to increase the security of Android phones?

5. Do not click on anonymous links

Many mobile phones get infected with malware by clicking on unknown links received through SMS or social media messages. You should note that you should never click on any unknown link, even from a familiar person. Or if you are determined, take help from reliable websites to determine if the link is safe.