“I think it’s comparable in scale with the Industrial Revolution or electricity — or maybe the wheel.”

That’s how University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton characterized advancements in artificial intelligence in a recent interview with CBS News.

Considered a “godfather of deep learning,” Hinton was among several AI experts and practitioners featured in the segment, which highlighted Toronto as a leading hub for AI research.

CBS’s Brook Silva-Braga also spoke with U of T computer science alumnus Nick Frosst, co-founder of natural language processing startup Cohere, who walked him through an experimental preview of a chatbot the company has been working on.

Frosst and Hinton weighed in on the pace of recent AI developments, and how soon we might expect to see AI that far surpasses human levels of intelligence, often referred to as Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI.

Watch the CBS News segment below: