Geoffrey Hinton

Chief scientific advisor, Vector Institute

ToronTo is To Ai what the Klondike was to the gold rush. Every company that wants in on the machine-learning revolution is setting up an artificial intelligence lab here—including, this year alone, Samsung, Adobe, LG and Nvidia. Hinton is the guy to thank for that. The so-called godfather of artificial intelligence—he trained the AI aces who now work at Google, Facebook and Apple—is the raison d’être for the Vector Institute, a downtown research hub that requires its international investors to open AI labs in Canada. SIdE GIGS: He’s professor emeritus at U of T and scientific advisor at Google Brain.