If you want to blame someone for the hoopla around artificial intelligence, 69-year-old Google researcher Geoff Hinton is a good candidate. The droll University of Toronto professor jolted the field onto a new trajectory in October 2012. With two grad students, Hinton showed that an unfashionable technology he'd championed for decades called artificial neural networks permitted a huge leap in machines' ability to understand images. Within six months, all three researchers were on Google's payroll. Today neural networks transcribe our speech, recognize our pets, and fight our trolls.

If you want to blame someone for the hoopla around artificial intelligence, 69-year-old Google researcher Geoff Hinton is a good candidate.