Nobel Prize for Physics: AI takes centre stage

It’s time for the first of our Nobel Prizes. Here’s Will Tingle on physics…

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics has been won by two scientists whom the committee say have “helped lay the foundations for modern artificial intelligence”. They are Princeton University’s John Hopfield, and the University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton.

Professor Hinton said that he was flabbergasted to win. But he shouldn't have been. In the course of our lifetimes, his pioneering work on machine learning is likely to change the way that we do almost everything. It has even prompted a huge existential crisis about the power of machines, and seen world leaders gather at summits in a bid to address moral panics. 

In the late 1960s, Hinton read a number of subjects - including natural sciences, the history of art, and philosophy - at the University of Cambridge. This breadth of understanding of the human condition would ultimately lead to his pioneering work on neural interfaces, which helped pave the way for the creation of what we now know as artificial intelligence.

His work on deep learning at Google would see the birth of revolutionary tools that powered the creation of systems like ChatGPT- which is now used by hundreds of millions of people - and helped earn him the nickname the 'Godfather of AI'. But he did not - as has been reported widely in the wake of his Nobel Prize - resign from Google because he was worried about AI. This is what he told our Titans of Science programme earlier this year:

Hinton: People have sort of the wrong story. The media loves to make a nice story and a nice story would've been, I got very upset about the dangers of AI and that's why I left Google. It wasn't really that. I was 75, it was time to retire. I wasn't as good at doing research as I had been, and I wanted to take things easy and watch a lot of Netflix, but I thought I'd take the opportunity just to warn about the dangers of AI. And so I talked to a New York Times journalist and warned about the dangers of AI and then all hell broke loose. I was very surprised at how big a reaction there was.

Geoffrey Hinton speaking to the Naked Scientists earlier this year.

Geoff, of course, is only half of this remarkable story. His co-recipient, John Hopfield, invented a network that can save and recreate patterns. This is of course fundamental to the operation of artificial intelligence. Professor Hopfield - who is based at Princeton University - also developed a network that can use incomplete patterns to find the most similar. A bit like using a computer to fill in the gaps.

John Hopfield doesn’t have a nickname like the 'Godfather of AI' - but we thought we should ask ChatGPT. It suggested the ‘Network Architect’, the ‘Synapse Sage’ or the ‘Neuron Master’. John and Geoff really haven’t done badly at all have they? Congratulations to you both.