Geoffrey Hinton glad one of his students had a hand in ousting Sam Altman

"In 2012, it still seemed that these digital intelligences were not nearly as good as people. They might be able to get about the same as people at recognizing objects and images, but at that time we didn't think they'd be able to deal with language and understanding complicated things," Hinton said.

"Ilya changed his mind before me. It turned out he was right," he added.