Hinton on regret: after 50 years building AI, he wishes he'd spent more time with his wife
danysvnt · x · 2026-10-26
In a 2025 Diary of a CEO interview, Geoffrey Hinton reveals his personal side: asked what he'd do differently after 50 years building the tech he now warns could wipe us out, he says "I wish I spent more time with my wife" — both his wives died of cancer. Key threads: great-great-grandfather George Boole invented the logic computers run on; cousin Joan Hinton was a Los Alamos physicist who moved to China over the bomb; he stuck with neural networks when everyone called them crazy; Google bought his 2012 startup for $44M; he left in 2023 to warn the world, won the 2024 Nobel Prize — yet calls himself "kind of obsessed with work."
Related event: Hinton Opens Up About Regrets as Developers Push Back on His AI Warning(2 posts)→