Professor Geoffrey Hinton is presented with the UCD Ulysses Medal

Professor Geoffrey Hinton was presented with the UCD Ulysses Medal by UCD President Professor Orla Feely during a ceremony at UCD O’Reilly Hall on Monday 8 April 2024 at 6.30pm.

The UCD Ulysses medal is the highest honour that the College can bestow. It is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding global contribution.

Professor Hinton is one of the most influential AI researchers of the past 50 years, a pioneer who spent his career trying to build AI systems that model the human brain.

In this video of the event, UCD School of Computer Science’s Dr Andrew Hines introduces the presentation of the UCD Ulysses medal to Professor Geoffrey Hinton and reads his citation.

Prof Hinton responds to his award and gives a talk about Artificial Intelligence, touching on neural networks, backpropagation, language and meaning, learning and language models and how LLMs work.

UCD President Orla Feely speaks about the challenges of research and Geoffrey Hinton’s career and impact. She speaks about the potential applications, opportunities, limitations and challenges of AI.

Professor Kate Robson Brown, UCD’s Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact, joins Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Hines on stage for a discussion about his career and his thoughts on a range of subjects. The discussion covers advice to early career researchers, what we can all do together to make AI safe in the interests of humanity and society, the risks of bias and disinformation and how soon AI will be smarter than us. They discuss AI regulation and policy and applications of AI in the health sector, such as medical imaging. The audience has a chance to ask questions and hear Geoffrey Hinton’s views and insights on topics such as work-life balance, energy use, neuroscience and the brain and the role of government in making AI safe.

UCD CS News report https://www.ucd.ie/cs/news/ulyssesmed...

UCD News report
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RTE report
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