‘Godfather’ of AI Geoffrey Hinton offers $1-million for Ontario Science Centre roof

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Geoffrey Hinton, the Toronto-based computer scientist often called the godfather of artificial intelligence, says he would donate $1-million to repair the Ontario Science Centre if the provincial government agrees to keep the institution in its current 55-year-old building.

The world-renowned academic said in an interview Wednesday with The Globe and Mail that he was adding his name to others from the tech industry who have offered to pay for critical roof repairs to keep the Science Centre open after the government closed it without warning last week.

But Dr. Hinton said he would only participate if Ontario Premier Doug Ford abandons plans, announced last year, to move the facility from its current home in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park area to a smaller yet-to-be-constructed building at the province’s waterfront Ontario Place site, next to a controversial planned spa and waterpark.

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The 76-year-old emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Toronto said he had “little faith” the new building, not due to open until 2028, would be as good as the current one, given its smaller size.

Dr. Hinton is currently the chief scientific adviser at the Vector Institute, a government-funded AI research institution. He made waves when he left a senior post with Google last year, citing concerns about the potential future impact of AI.

He said the Science Centre is needed to nurture the next generation of scientists.

“The Science Centre engages children’s natural curiosity about the world, which is the foundation of all science and engineering,” Dr. Hinton said.

“They are going to need some understanding of science and engineering to deal with whatever future awaits us. It would be a tragedy to lose one of Ontario’s jewels.”

Ontario Science Centre shut down over roof collapse risk, says Ford government

In a surprise move last Friday, the Ontario government said it was immediately shutting the Science Centre, pointing to an engineering report that says that, without repairs to some faulty concrete panels, its roof could collapse under the weight of a heavy snowfall this winter. Citing the report, the head of the government’s Infrastructure Ontario agency, Michael Lindsay, said last week that the work could cost as much as $40-million and take two to five years.

But critics have pointed to other passages in the engineering report that show only a small percentage of concrete roof panels were found to be at risk. The report also includes an alternative option to a shutdown: Parts of the building could be cordoned off for phased repairs. And it estimates that the costs of short-term roof repairs could be as little as just over $500,000.

Based on those numbers, former executives with Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify had already said publicly that they would raise or put forward as much as $1.5-millon to repair the existing Science Centre’s roof and keep it open for the summer.

Plus, the architecture firm that built the facility, Moriyama Teshima, offered this week to work for free on the restoration of the Science Centre, saying that it would produce far fewer carbon emissions than building an entirely new facility. The building, a Centennial project launched in 1967, opened in 1969, and was one of the first interactive science museums in the world.

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Dr. Hinton said he has been approaching others in the tech industry to see if they would contribute to the repairs. Aidan Gomez, co-founder of Toronto-based AI startup Cohere, spoke to The Globe on Wednesday after Dr. Hinton contacted him.

Mr. Gomez said he was willing to put in $250,000 to save the current Science Centre. His father was a teacher at the high school embedded in the facility, he said, and going to the building as a child inspired him to pursue a tech career.

The abrupt shutdown of the Science Centre has sparked outrage from many in community and from local and opposition politicians. Both Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie intend to speak at the site on Thursday and have vowed to fight the shutdown.

But the government has shown no signs of changing its mind. Ash Milton, a spokesperson for Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, says the engineering report “proposed a single scope of work” for the roof repairs, and that, even if they were to go ahead immediately, it would still require a summer shutdown.

Ontario searching for smaller, temporary home for Toronto’s science centre

Mr. Milton pointed to the engineering report’s top recommendation that to “mitigate all risks,” all of the faulty roof panels should “be replaced in their entirety with new steel deck in alignment with the next roofing assembly renewal.” He also said other “critical systems” at the aging site have a repair bill of “at least $478-million.”

The government has also already started looking for an interim site to house the Science Centre’s exhibits before the Ontario Place site is completed. The interim site is also expected to be substantially smaller than the current facility.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union says about 50 cafeteria workers at the Science Centre are set to be laid off, despite a pledge from the provincial government last week that there would be “no immediate job losses” from the shutdown. The contractor that employs the workers, Levy Canada, said in an e-mailed statement it was “exploring opportunities elsewhere within our organization” for them.

Mr. Milton argued in an e-mail that no promise had been broken, as contract staff do not “fall under the government’s purview.”

Toronto City Council is set to deal with a motion on Thursday asking city bureaucrats to study what obligations the province has under its lease and whether the city could take over operation of the Science Centre. The motion would also instruct city staff to re-examine the province’s estimates on repair costs and its rationale for moving the facility.