Mines Action Canada congratulates University of Toronto Professor Geoffrey Hinton, the 2024 Nobel Prize Laureate for Physics. Often referred to as one of the Godfathers of Artificial Intelligence along with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCunn, Professor Geoffrey Hinton was also an early supporter of a ban on autonomous weapons. Along with the late University of Ottawa law professor Ian Kerr and Yoshua Bengio he authored an open letter to Canada’s Prime Minister on November 2, 2017 calling for Canada to take a leading position on efforts to ban autonomous weapons.

It is important to recognize that leaders on artificial intelligence, like Professor Geoffrey Hinton, are opposed to autonomous weapons and believe these weapons stand on the wrong side of a clear moral line. We are pleased to see that Professor Geoffrey Hinton has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics and we hope to see his advocacy against autonomous weapons continue!