The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of artificial intelligence,” for a series of discoveries that provided the foundation for contemporary machine learning and AI.
Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, explained how the two luminaries “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.” Those networks have not only had a significant impact on scientific research but have also become central to everyday applications like facial recognition and automatic translation, making technology increasingly accessible to the general public.
However, Moons warned that “while machine learning brings enormous benefits, its rapid development has raised concerns about our future.” Not surprisingly, Hinton recently left his role at Google to have greater freedom to express his fears regarding the uncontrolled developments of the technologies he helped create.
“I’m flabbergasted. I had no idea this would happen,” said Hinton, a British-Canadian professor at the University of Toronto, in a spontaneous reaction—while his American colleague Hopfield is affiliated with Princeton University.
The Nobel Prize in Physics, as per tradition, comes with a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about 1 million dollars). The two physicists will receive their commemorative medal in a solemn ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
The announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is expected tomorrow, followed by the Literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday, while the recognition for economic sciences will be revealed on October 14.
