The 75-year-old computer scientist has divided his time between the University of Toronto and Google since 2013, when the tech giant acquired Hinton's AI startup DNNresearch. Hinton's company was a spinout from his research group, which was doing cutting-edge work with machine learning for image recognition at the time. Google used that technology to boost photo search and more. Hinton has long called out ethical questions around AI, especially its co-optation for military purposes. He has said that one reason he chose to spend much of his career in Canada is that it is easier to get research funding that does not have ties to the US Department of Defense.