Renowned AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton is making a significant impact with his philanthropic efforts, establishing the Sejnowski-Hinton Prize to recognize novel contributions to artificial intelligence and donating a portion of his Nobel Prize winnings to charity.
Geoffrey Hinton’s Philanthropic Efforts: Creating a New Award for Young Machine Learning Researchers
Geoffrey Hinton, the recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, is donating some of his newfound award winnings to establish a separate prize benefitting young machine learning researchers. Hinton and his co-winner John Hopfield received the prize in October for their contributions to the field of A.I.—an honor that was accompanied by 11 million Swedish krona ($1 million) in prize money for the two winners to share.
The Sejnowski-Hinton Prize: Recognizing Novel Contributions to Artificial Intelligence
A portion of Hinton’s $500,000 will fund the newly created Sejnowski-Hinton Prize, an annual prize of $10,000 that will be given out at the machine learning-focused Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). The award, announced earlier this week at NeurIPS 2024, will recognize collaborations involving two or more researchers under the age 40 who propose a novel theory of how the human brain works.
Hinton himself is celebrated for his work on artificial neural networks, which take inspiration from the structure of human brains and laid the groundwork for today’s A.I. revolution. His Nobel Prize win specified his development of the Boltzmann machine, a type of neural network using statistical probabilities. It was built off his co-laureate’s Hopfield machine, a neural network model able to store information in data.
The Remainder of Hinton’s Prize Money: Charity and Giving Back
The remainder of Hinton’s Nobel Prize winnings are earmarked for charity. Half of his prize money will benefit Water First, a Canadian nonprofit working to solve challenges around drinking water in indigenous communities. The A.I. pioneer also intends to donate some of the funds to a charity that aids neurodiverse young adults in finding employment.
Hinton previously worked at Google before stepping away from the tech company last year. He has since become a prominent advocate for enhanced safety regulations around A.I.’s immediate and existential threats. Upon winning the Nobel Prize earlier this year, the academic said he expected the honor to “make me more credible” when warning about the technology’s risks.
In addition to his philanthropic efforts, Hinton is also donating an early Boltzmann chip to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. The annual awards tradition allows Nobel Laureates to provide the museum with a personal item that is important to them.
