4.AlexNet Shocked the World

In 2012, Hinton and his students created a famous AI system called AlexNet. One of his students was Alex Krizhevsky.

That year, there was an international competition called the ImageNet Image Recognition Challenge.

The task was simple:

“Show pictures to a computer and ask it to identify what is inside.”

For example:

* A cat?
* A dog?
* An airplane?
* A car?

Before AlexNet, computers were not very good at image recognition. But AlexNet performed far better than every other team, dramatically reducing the error rate.

Technology companies around the world were shocked.

From that year onward:

It is fair to say that 2012 became a major turning point in the explosion of modern AI.

5.He Was Not Only a Scientist, but Also a Teacher

Hinton also had another important role: educator.

Many of his students later became world-leading AI experts, including:

* Yann LeCun
* Ilya Sutskever

These researchers later helped develop many advanced AI technologies, including the conversational AI systems we know today.

That is why some people say:

“Hinton not only created AI technology — he also trained the people who transformed the AI world.”

6.The Concerns of the “Godfather of AI”

Interestingly, one of the people most responsible for advancing AI has recently begun warning the world about its dangers.

Hinton left Google so that he could speak more freely about AI safety.

He worries that if artificial intelligence becomes too powerful in the future, humans may no longer be able to fully control it.

Therefore, he believes the world must pay attention not only to developing AI, but also to:

* Safety
* Ethics
* Laws
* The future of humanity

This reminds us that truly great scientists do not only create technology — they also think carefully about how it may affect the world.

7. What Can We Learn from Him?

Students, Geoffrey Hinton’s story is not only a story about technology. It is also a lesson about life.

He teaches us three important things.

First, believe in your ideas.

Even when many people doubted neural networks, he continued his research.

Second, failure is not something to fear.

AI went through a difficult “winter,” but he never gave up.

Third, technology brings both power and responsibility.

People who invent new technologies must also think about how those technologies may affect society.

Conclusion

Today’s artificial intelligence may seem like a miracle that appeared suddenly. But behind it are decades of hard work by countless scientists.

And Geoffrey Hinton is one of the most important among them.

From backpropagation, to deep learning, to the success of AlexNet, he changed the direction of world technology step by step.

Perhaps one of you in the future will become the next scientist who changes the world.

And what truly matters is not only how intelligent you are, but whether you are willing to continue believing in your dreams even when others doubt you.

Who Is Geoffrey Hinton? by ICONADA Research Team 

Today, I would like to introduce a scientist who changed the world — Geoffrey Hinton (1948– ).

Many people call him the “Godfather of AI” because many of the artificial intelligence technologies we use today — such as chatbots, machine translation, facial recognition, and even self-driving cars — are deeply connected to his research.

Geoffrey Hinton received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for combining ideas from physics and neural networks to lay the foundations of modern artificial intelligence and deep learning, fundamentally changing the way humans interact with computers.

Some of you may wonder:

“Didn’t artificial intelligence suddenly appear only in recent years?”

Actually, no.

AI research has a history of several decades, and Professor Hinton is one of the most important figures in that story. He spent more than forty years developing a technology that many people had nearly abandoned, eventually turning it into a force that changed the world.

1.A Dream Inspired by the Human Brain

Geoffrey Hinton was born in the United Kingdom and later conducted research in Canada. He always had one important idea:

“If the human brain can learn, could computers learn in a similar way?”

Because of this question, he began studying “artificial neural networks.”

A neural network is a system designed to imitate the way neurons in the human brain work.

Our brains learn through experience. For example:

* A child falls down and learns to be more careful next time.
* A student gets a math problem wrong and learns how to improve.

Hinton believed computers should also be able to learn from mistakes.

2.The Most Important Breakthrough: Backpropagation

In the 1980s, artificial neural networks faced a major problem: computers did not know what mistakes they had made, so they could not truly “learn.”

In 1986, Hinton and other researchers introduced a revolutionary technique called “backpropagation.”

Don’t be frightened by the name.

Simply put, it works like correcting an exam paper.

For example:

* The computer first gives an answer.
* It discovers the answer is wrong.
* The system checks backward step by step to find the error.
* Then it adjusts its internal settings so the next answer will be closer to the correct one.

This is very similar to how a teacher helps students correct mistakes on a test.

Backpropagation became one of the most important foundations of modern deep learning.

Without this technology, many AI tools we use today might not even exist.

3.He Continued When Others Gave Up

However, Hinton’s research journey was not easy.

From the 1990s to the early 2000s, many scientists believed neural networks had “no future.”

At that time, computers were not powerful enough, and there was not enough data available. AI research entered a difficult period known as the “AI Winter.”

Many researchers switched to other fields because they thought neural networks would never succeed.

But Hinton did not give up.

In 2006, he introduced a new method called the “Deep Belief Network (DBN),” which helped solve the problem of training deep neural networks. This achievement officially began the era of “deep learning.”

This teaches us an important lesson:

Great scientific discoveries often come from long-term persistence.

[iCONADA Research Team]The industrialization of bamboo in Kudat

The industrialization of bamboo in Kudat, Sabah, creates a conflict between corporate environmentalism and the preservation of indigenous cultural practices. This shift threatens the traditional, ecologically rooted crafting of the sompoton mouth organ, as rapid urbanization and agricultural expansion destroy necessary, specific raw materials.

While some artists attempt to bridge tradition with modern soundscapes, the fundamental, slow art of crafting these instruments faces erasure from profit-driven industrial priorities.

The industrial transformation of Kudat’s bamboo landscape creates a deep cultural fracture. It replaces an ancient, intimate relationship with nature with a fast-paced, profit-driven system of mass production.

The Shift from Sacred to IndustrialLoss of Ritual: Traditionally, harvesting bamboo required specific seasonal timing and deep spiritual respect.Industrial harvesting views the plant strictly as tons of biomass per hectare.

Ecosystem Destruction: Wild bamboo varieties like sumbiling are being cleared for uniform, high-yield industrial species. This directly wipes out the rare raw materials needed for traditional instruments.

Altered Landscapes: The diverse, natural forests of northern Sabah are being replaced by rigid, monoculture industrial bamboo plantations.

The Standardisation of Craft Loss of Identity: Mass-produced bamboo souvenirs favor speed and uniformity. This erases the unique hand-carved markers and personal stories of individual Rungus artisans.

Acoustic Decline: True sompoton makers tune instruments by ear using natural palm reeds. Commercialization replaces these with cheap plastic or metal parts, destroying the authentic, earthy tone of Bornean music.

Generational Disconnect: Youth are being trained as factory machine operators rather than master craftsmen. This breaks the sacred chain of oral tradition and ancient knowledge transmission.

The Myth of Green Progress Corporate Domination: While "eco-friendly" corporate initiatives generate high profits, very little wealth actually returns to the indigenous communities who protected the land for centuries.

Cultural Extraction: Indigenous knowledge about bamboo properties is heavily studied and used by corporations, yet the communities themselves face displacement from their ancestral lands.

Superficial Preservation: True cultural survival requires protecting the entire forest ecosystem. Simply putting an image of a bamboo instrument on industrial marketing brochures is not real preservation.

遇上·北婆羅洲 09 婆羅洲海角