Forging ahead with technological advances in society without the input of the humanities leads to situations like the plight of the Uighurs in China or ¡°obscene¡± military uses for technology, according to a groundbreaking scientist.

Geoffrey Hinton (pictured below), seen as one of the pioneers of modern artificial intelligence for his decades-old research on deep learning and neural networks, also told Times Higher Education¡¯s World Academic Summit?¨C held online in partnership with the University of Toronto?on 1-3 September?¨C that he was ¡°very happy¡± if universities use big science grants to help fund the humanities.

The distinguished emeritus professor at Toronto?¨C who was hired part time by Google in 2013 and is now a vice-president and engineering fellow at the tech giant?¨C said that although technology ¡°allows us to create lots of goodies¡±, other disciplines were vital for helping society determine how to use such advances. ?

¡°How those goodies get distributed and used depends on things that aren¡¯t technology, that depends on social decisions about how we should divide things up and those are really important,¡± he said in an interview with THE editor John Gill.

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A ¡°technologically advanced society but without the humanities¡± then leads to problems, he said, adding that ¡°modern China is a bit like that; you get things like the Uighurs in western China¡±,?subjected to high-tech and intensive surveillance by the Chinese state.

Another potential issue was ¡°if you have too much military funding¡±, with Professor Hinton pointing to an example of ¡°self-healing¡± minefields that had been developed in the US where mines re-establish themselves after being detonated.

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¡°This seemed just completely obscene to me, to talk about healing from the point of view of the mines?¨C and that¡¯s what you get if you don¡¯t have enough humanities, I think," he added.

He said he was ¡°very happy with the idea that most universities use the big grants for science to help subsidise the humanities, I think that¡¯s a good thing to do¡±, while criticising governments that sought to tie non-science funding to economic impact.

Professor Hinton was also highly critical of politicians ¡°deciding winners in science¡± by tying all funding to particular missions and said research systems needed a culture of allowing for failure.

On this latter point, he said the UK?¨C where he completed his doctorate in the 1970s?¨C had not always had the best approach, referring to governments in the past pushing for PhDs to be completed in a set amount of time.

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¡°A lot of the best PhDs take five or more years and involve graduate students trying a bunch of things and failing and then trying something else,¡± he said.

¡°That is how it has to be when you¡¯re doing an apprenticeship, and Britain doesn¡¯t seem to allow for that well enough,¡± he continued, adding that the ¡°net result¡± of trying to ¡°regiment¡± a doctorate?is that ¡°you can¡¯t afford to do original research for a PhD¡±.

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Meanwhile, Professor Hinton said he was not too concerned that industry would starve universities of AI talent.

This was because there was now a steady pipeline of researchers coming through in the field and among them there would be scientists for whom ideas were more important than earning a high salary.

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Universities would also continue to be the best places for developing ¡°radical new ideas¡± that might rethink the foundations of AI, even if firms might be more equipped for large computational experiments, while universities would be ¡°essential¡± for handling ethical questions.

¡°I think issues like fairness are probably best studied in universities where researchers don¡¯t have any links to a company, so they can be critical of a company without creating problems,¡± he said.

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simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com