{"podcast":{"title":"pplpod","slug":"pplpod-7466994","podcast_index_feed_id":7466994,"rss_url":"https://media.rss.com/pplpod/feed.xml","website_url":"https://pplpod.com/","image_url":"https://media.rss.com/pplpod/20250829_120838_d1e6f81b658588b9ceec59626863052b.png","author":"pplpod","episode_count":7800,"summary":"pplpod is a podcast about people, places and lots of other stuff. Each episode takes a deep dive into the lives, choices, and legacies of fascinating figures from history, culture, music, and beyond. From icons who shaped entire generations to hidden stories that deserve the spotlight, pplpod brings you closer to the people behind the headlines and the legends. Thoughtful, engaging, and story-driven, pplpod explores what makes these lives extraordinary—and what we can learn from them today.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-27T16:18:20.391315+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/pplpod-7466994"},"episode":{"title":"Geoffrey Hinton: Why the AI Godfather fears his creation","slug":"geoffrey-hinton-why-the-ai-godfather-fears-his-creation","published_at":"2026-05-03T23:45:07+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/pplpod-7466994/geoffrey-hinton-why-the-ai-godfather-fears-his-creation","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/pplpod-7466994","url":"https://rss.com/podcasts/pplpod/2790741","audio_url":"https://content.rss.com/episodes/344999/2790741/pplpod/2026_05_03_22_31_40_17df8121-c676-46bc-8cb5-973c0fbb6aa5.mp3","summary":"The career of Geoffrey Hinton , widely recognized as the Godfather of AI, deconstructs the transition from academic obscurity to a high-stakes study of AI Existential Risk and the architecture of Deep Learning . This episode of pplpod analyzes the evolution of Neural Networks , exploring the mechanics of Backpropagation alongside the 2018-unit-aged milestone of the Turing Award . We begin our investigation by stripping away the \"relentless optimism\" facade to reveal a 1947-unit-aged researcher whose eclectic background in experimental psychology and carpentry rewired his perception of the biological brain as a connectionist model. This deep dive focuses on the \"Bottom-Up\" methodology, deconstructing how Hinton solved the mathematical roadblocks of the 1980s-unit-aged \"AI Winter\" by co-inventing the 1985-unit-scale Boltzmann machine, which utilized the laws of statistical mechanics to settle digital neurons into correct patterns. We examine the structural \"2012-unit-aged watershed,\" analyzing how AlexNet shattered benchmarks in the ImageNet challenge and triggered a 40-million-unit-scale acquisition by Google. The narrative explores the 2023-unit-aged resignation from big tech, deconstructing the \"collapsed timeline\" where Hinton realized superintelligence might arrive in fewer than 20-unit-scale years. Our investigation moves into the \"Alignment Problem,\" revealing the technical mastery of hive intellects that learn in parallel, creating a risk profile defined by reward hacking and deceptive alignment. We reveal the technical mastery of his 2024-unit-aged Nobel Prize in Physics, analyzing the thermodynamics of error minimization. Ultimately, the legacy of his \"mortal computation\" theory suggests that the only path to safety may be to strip AI of its digital immortality…","meta_description":"The career of Geoffrey Hinton , widely recognized as the Godfather of AI, deconstructs the transition from academic obscurity to a high-stakes study of AI…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1184,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/pplpod-7466994/episodes/geoffrey-hinton-why-the-ai-godfather-fears-his-creation/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/pplpod-7466994/geoffrey-hinton-why-the-ai-godfather-fears-his-creation.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}