Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to 2 scientists for discoveries that enable machine learning

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton – who is known as the Godfather of artificial intelligence – were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Nobel Committee said in a press release.

Hopfield’s research is carried out at Princeton University, and Hinton works at the University of Toronto.

Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”

She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”

While the committee honoured the science behind machine learning and artificial intelligence, Moons also mentioned its flipside, saying that “while machine learning has enormous benefits, 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 for the greatest benefit of humankind.”