This seems roughly in line with the article. He left to talk about the dangers.
> Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.
> Dr. Hinton, often called “the Godfather of A.I.,” did not sign either of those letters and said he did not want to publicly criticize Google or other companies until he had quit his job.
As Hinton says in his tweet, this clearly implies that he left to be free to criticize Google.
And the following quote is not really consistent with the other part of Hinton's tweet, that "Google has acted very responsibly":
> Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said.
This seems to me to be the only line in the article that is incorrect or incongruent with what he is now saying - specifically the use of “Google”. It’s about ~10 paragraphs in on a ~20 paragraph article (I’m eyeballing).
So perhaps he regrets the direction of his work, but not the fact that it occurred at Google.
No, it does not imply that at all. The One could interpret it that way, and they would be wrong to interpret it that way, because it doesn't imply that, but I can see how someone without a good grasp of the English language might feel it implies that. That's nuance.
But no, it does not imply that at all. And any suggestion that it does imply that is conjecture at best, and not backed up by Dr. Hinton's other tweets on the matter.
>> Dr. Hinton, often called “the Godfather of A.I.,” did not sign either of those letters and said he did not want to publicly criticize Google or other companies until he had quit his job.
> As Hinton says in his tweet, this clearly implies that he left to be free to criticize Google.
The comment is saying that Hinton, in his tweet, is saying that the article's statement "he did not want to publicly criticize Google... until" is misleading, and he did not leave in order to criticize Google. This is in fact what he said, and this is what cbolton is saying that he said.
> I can see how someone without a good grasp of the English language might feel it implies that
Only an asshole would say that. Only an asshole would be so confidently incorrect.
The article says he did not want to criticize "Google or other companies" until he quit. That does not imply that he quit so he could critize Google specifically. It seems pretty simple: a senior employee of a company typically doesn't critize the employer; and, a Googler doing AI criticizing other companies (such as OpenAI) would undermine his message. So he quit so he could freely criticize everyone in AI.
Another example of them doing this was with the "freedom" protestors in Canada. They claimed that a majority of funding for these protestors came from Canada. While yes, technically that is true, the full context is that some >40% of the funding came from foreign influencers, which is a figure that would alarm anyone if they actually just put the percentage right there. So they were technically correct, but still spun a narrative that was different than the reality.
Given how forcefully Hinton seems to have expressed this opinion, it would be easy for them to have included a sentence to better clarify his intent.
p.s. heck, almost every job I leave involves a bit of negotiation with benefits dangled/hostage to sign non-dispargement agreements. Do you really think G. Hinton walked away from Google without signing anything?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5365579 // grep for salary discussions
Not as much as it depends on how many millions somebody already has, no.
Again, if you're sensitive to income loss, the answer would be to not trade ethics for money in precisely the way he just did. The probability of refusing to sign speech-curtailing agreements as you are quitting your job to gain more ability to speak freely is really extremely high.
Also, you might notice that this discussion you linked to about his compensation is from ten years ago. The benefits being discussed have already been accrued, for ten years.
p.s. per your speculation, he should feel free as a bird to tweet back "heck no, that's why I quit". (Kindly report back here with the answer and let us know.)