This is an ignorant and hyperbolic characterization of recent developments in neural networks.  In no way did most AI researchers think that it was &quot;nuts&quot; to learn using neural nets.  Instead, neural networks was an approach that had fallen out of favor, and many considered other approaches to be more promising.  However, I don&#x27;t think that any serious researcher has ever called Geoffrey Hinton &quot;nuts.&quot;  He was very well respected in his field before this epic hotel meeting.