John Hopfield & Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering work in AI development

Two renowned scientists — John Hopfield, a 91-year-old American, and Geoffrey Hinton, a 76-year-old British-born Canadian, were on Oct 8 awarded the Nobel Prize for pioneering work in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

They were honored "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks," the jury said. "These artificial neural networks have been used to advance research across physics topics as diverse as particle physics, material science, and astrophysics," Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, told a press conference.

Moons also noted that these tools have also become part of our daily lives, including facial recognition and language translation.
While lauding the potential of AI, Moons noted that "its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future collectively."
"Humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way," she said.

The scientists, working separately, did most of their ground-breaking research in the 1980s, but the impact of their work is beginning to show results only recently.

Hopfield, who is a professor at Princeton University, was spotlighted for having created "an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data."

I am flabbergasted: Hinton

"I am flabbergasted, I had no idea this would happen," Hinton told reporters as the laureates were announced in Stockholm.
The jury said Hinton, a professor at the University of Toronto, "invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures."

Hinton said he was an avid user of AI tools such as ChatGPT but also conceded that he had concerns about the potential impact of the technology he helped spawn.

"In the same circumstances, I would do the same again, but I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control," he added.

The big success of Hopfield and Hinton has been in developing computer algorithms that mimic the functioning of the human brain in performing common tasks. Computers were invented to carry out repetitive calculation-based tasks that were too time-consuming for humans.

But soon, scientists began wondering whether machines could also be made to do things that humans seemed to be far better at — remembering, recognizing, creating, learning, and making intelligent guesses.

Face recognition or image improvement tools

Hopfield’s network processed information using the entire network structure and not its individual constituents. His work is a leap towards enabling pattern recognition in computers, something that allows face recognition or image improvement tools that are common now.

This is unlike traditional computing in which information is stored or processed in the smallest bits.

So, when a Hopfield network is given new information, like an image or a song, it captures the entire pattern in one go, remembering the connections or relationships between the constituting parts, like pixels in the case of images. It allows the network to recall, identify, or regenerate that image or song when an incomplete, or similar-looking, image is passed as input.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is the second Nobel of the season after the Medicine Prize on Oct 7 was awarded to American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. The United States duo were honored for their discovery of microRNA and its role in how genes are regulated.

Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prize honors those, who according to scientist Alfred Nobel, "conferred the greatest benefit on humankind". Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to France's Pierre Agostini, Hungarian-Austrian Ferenc Krausz, and Franco-Swede Anne L'Huillier for research using ultra-quick light flashes that enable the study of electrons inside atoms and molecules.

The Physics prize will be followed by the Chemistry prize on Oct 9, with the highly anticipated literature and peace prizes to be announced on Oct 10 and 11 respectively.

The Economics Prize wraps up the 2024 Nobel season on Oct 14. The winners will receive their prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal, and a $1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on Dec 10, the death anniversary of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will.