AI Pioneers Hopfield, Hinton Win 2024 Nobel Prize for Neural Networks

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to two pioneers whose work laid the foundation for today’s artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, even as one of the recipients has become a vocal critic of the technology’s potential dangers.

The Academy announced Tuesday (Oct. 8) that John J. Hopfield, 91, of Princeton University, and Geoffrey E. Hinton, 77, of the University of Toronto, share the prestigious award “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

From Physics to AI

The two laureates’ work, which dates back to the 1980s, provided crucial building blocks for modern machine learning techniques. Their innovations in training artificial neural networks — computing systems inspired by the human brain — have become fundamental to today’s AI industry.

“The laureates’ work has already been of the greatest benefit,” Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in the announcement. “In physics we use artificial neural networks in a vast range of areas, such as developing new materials with specific properties.”

Hopfield pioneered a type of neural network that can store and reconstruct patterns in data, such as images. His approach drew on concepts from physics, particularly the behavior of atomic spins in materials.

Hinton built on Hopfield’s work to develop the Boltzmann machine, a more sophisticated neural network capable of autonomously discovering important features in data. This innovation proved critical for tasks like image classification and generating new examples of learned patterns.

A Laureate’s Warning: The Double-Edged Sword of AI

In recent years, Hinton has become an outspoken voice cautioning against the potential risks posed by advanced AI systems. In May 2023, Hinton resigned from his position at Google to speak more freely about these concerns. Since then, he has advocated for more AI regulations.

“I suspect that Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun have missed the main reason why the big companies want regulations,” Hinton wrote last year on X. “Years ago the founder of a self-driving company told me that he liked safety regulations because if you satisfied them it reduced your legal liability for accidents.”

The prize, which amounts to 11 million Swedish kronor (approximately $1 million), will be shared equally between the two laureates.

This year’s award highlights the interdisciplinary nature of scientific breakthroughs.

“When we talk about artificial intelligence, we often mean machine learning using artificial neural networks,” the committee noted, underscoring the broad impact of the laureates’ work.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is the second of this year’s Nobel Prizes to be announced. The Medicine Prize was awarded on Monday, with the Chemistry Prize to follow on Wednesday. The Literature and Peace prizes will round out the week on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

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