Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday. The award was presented to him by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his “fundamental discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks”. At the University of Toronto press conference where Hinton discussed winning the Nobel Prize, he said that he wanted to acknowledge all of his students, all of whom are very smart, and some of them even smarter than him. But he said he was especially proud of one of his students who fired Sam Altman.

Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI and its former chief scientist, was a machine learning student at the University of Toronto – where Geoffrey Hinton has taught for years – and worked closely with the Nobel laureate.

“I would also like to express my gratitude to my students. I was particularly fortunate in that I had several very smart students, much smarter than me, who actually worked. He has done many great things. I’m especially proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman,” Hinton said.

Sutskever played a key role in the dramatic events surrounding the removal and subsequent reappointment of OpenAI 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 with staff to sign a letter urging Altman’s return and expressing regret over his involvement in the board’s decision to remove him.

Geoffrey Hinton has long expressed concern 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. His students included OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun. Hinton made major contributions to the development of AI, working with his students to create a neural network that formed the basis of tools such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard.

In 2023, Hinton left Google, citing his growing unease over the potential dangers of AI, 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 overtaking human intelligence, raising concerns about their ability to manipulate people. In an interview later that year, Hinton discussed how advanced AI could become highly persuasive by leveraging vast amounts of knowledge from literature and politics, potentially influencing human decisions on a significant scale.

His departure from Google marked a turning point in his mission to raise awareness of these important issues.