Written by Niklas Pollard and Johan Ahlander
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – American scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries and inventions that laid the foundation for machine learning, the Nobel Prize-awarding body said on Tuesday.
The award-giving body said in a statement: “This year’s Nobel Prize laureates in physics used tools from physics to develop methods that form the basis of today’s powerful machine learning.”
“Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionizing science, engineering and everyday life.”
Hopfield, a Princeton University professor, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the academy said.
She added that Hinton, who works as a professor at the University of Toronto, has devised a method that can independently find characteristics in data and perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in images.
“I’m amazed. I had no idea this was going to happen,” Hinton said by phone at the press conference announcing the award.
Hinton, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, resigned from Google (NASDAQ:) in 2023, and said he did so to speak freely about the dangers of the technology, after realizing that computers could become smarter than people much sooner than he and experts expected. others.
“While machine learning has enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future,” said Elaine Munz, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
“Humans collectively have a responsibility to use this new technology in a safe and ethical manner, for the greatest benefit to humanity.”
Awarding the second Nobel Prize in 2024
The prize comes with a sum of money of 11 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million), which is shared between the winners in the event that there are multiple winners. The Physics Prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Widely considered the most prestigious award for physicists around the world, it was created, along with the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace, in the will of Alfred Nobel.
The prizes have been awarded with some interruptions since 1901, although the Nobel honor in economics is a later addition in memory of the Swedish businessman and philanthropist, who made a fortune from his invention of dynamite.
Aside from the sometimes controversial selections for peace and literature, physics often gets the most attention among the awards, with the list of past winners including scientific luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi.
Last year’s Physics Prize was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Kraus and Anne Lhuillier for their work in creating very short pulses of light that can give a quick glimpse of changes inside atoms, potentially improving disease detection.
Physics is the second Nobel Prize awarded this week, after American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Rovkun won the Medicine Prize for their discovery of microRNA and its role in regulating genes, and shedding light on how cells specialize.
($1 = 10.3407 Swedish krona)
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