“Father of AI” is a title often attributed to John McCarthy for coining the term and foundational logic-based research, but in the modern era, Geoffrey Hinton is widely recognized as the “Godfather of AI” (or Deep Learning) for his work on neural networks.
Here are the details regarding the companies associated with these pioneers:
1. Geoffrey Hinton (“Godfather of AI”)
Hinton’s career is defined by his, and his students’, development of deep learning techniques that power modern AI, leading to his work with major tech companies and the founding of his own research-driven startup.
- DNNresearch Inc. (Founder): In 2012, Hinton co-founded DNNresearch Inc. with his students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever at the University of Toronto. The company was created to commercialize their breakthrough ImageNet image-recognition technology.
- Acquisition: Google acquired DNNresearch in 2013 for $44 million, recognizing the potential of their “AlexNet” neural network.
- Google Brain (Researcher/Advisor): Following the acquisition, Hinton worked for over a decade (2013–2023) as an Engineering Fellow at Google Brain, the core AI research division of Alphabet. He departed in May 2023 to freely speak about the risks of AI.
- Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Co-founder/Chief Advisor): In 2017, Hinton co-founded this Toronto-based non-profit corporation focused on research in the field of artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning and deep learning.
- University of Toronto (Professor Emeritus): While not a commercial company, Hinton has held a long-term role here since 1987, where he conducted his foundational research.
2. John McCarthy (“Father of AI”)
McCarthy, who passed away in 2011, focused on academic institutions rather than commercial startups.
- Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) (Founder): Established in 1962, McCarthy founded this lab, where he worked on early AI, including robotics, computer vision, and self-driving car concepts.
- MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Co-founder): In 1959, McCarthy co-founded the AI laboratory at MIT with Marvin Minsky. Teneo.Ai
3. Other “Godfathers” / Key Industry Founders
The 2018 Turing Award winners—Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio—are often collectively called the Godfathers of AI, and they have ties to major industry players: Business Insider
- Yann LeCun (Meta AI): Currently works as the Chief AI Scientist at Meta Platforms (Facebook).
- Yoshua Bengio (Element AI): Co-founded Element AI, a startup that developed AI software solutions for businesses, which was later acquired by ServiceNow in 2020. He also founded the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA).
- Demis Hassabis (DeepMind): Co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014.
- Andrew Ng (Google Brain/Coursera): Founded “Google Brain” in 2011 and co-founded education platform Coursera
Hinton has recently expressed regrets about his life’s work due to the potential existential risks of AI.
