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The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to 2 researchers who helped construct the foundations of the artificial intelligence that surrounds us at this time.
American John Hopfield and Briton Geoffrey Hinton each labored on machine studying methods that will go on to energy merchandise similar to ChatGPT.
However Wimbledon-born Professor Hinton is notable additionally for his opposition to these applied sciences. Final 12 months, he resigned from Google after a decade in order that he may freely warn in regards to the “existential danger” posed by the know-how.
Talking on the ceremony in Sweden, Prof Hinton mentioned he was “flabbergasted”, including: “I had no concept this could occur. I’m very shocked.”
The prize didn’t make reference to these warnings, nevertheless, and as an alternative was given to the 2 researchers “for foundational discoveries and innovations that allow machine studying with artificial neural networks”.
“This 12 months’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used instruments from physics to develop strategies which might be the muse of at this time’s highly effective machine studying,” the panel wrote in a press launch.
“John Hopfield created an associative reminiscence that may retailer and reconstruct pictures and different varieties of patterns in knowledge. Geoffrey Hinton invented a way [the Boltzmann machine] that may autonomously discover properties in knowledge, and so carry out duties similar to figuring out particular components in footage.”
The panel did reference the continued work on AI that has remodeled the world in latest years. Describing Prof Hinton’s work on early machine studying, it mentioned that he “has constructed upon this work, serving to provoke the present explosive improvement of machine studying.”
In a speech accepting the prize, Prof Hinton, who teaches on the College of Toronto, Canada, indicated he was pleased with his work on artificial intelligence and would “do the identical once more”. However he feared that the implications of his work could possibly be “programs extra clever than us that ultimately take management”.
Each researchers labored on early machine studying, the method that underpins these artificial intelligence breakthroughs. It’s impressed by the construction of the mind, however makes use of nodes in a pc reasonably than the neurons that underpin the mind.
These applied sciences are known as artificial neural networks. Each of the brand new Nobel laureates developed new networks that allowed for higher manipulation of knowledge.
Profs Hopfield and Hinton equally share this 12 months’s Nobel Prize for Physics.