Pioneering AI scientists win 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics

You scientists Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, Responsible for the inventions and discoveries that underpin some of the leading research in the field of artificial intelligence. Won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. The winners were announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday (8).

According to the committee responsible for the award, The duo’s decades of work have made it possible to create artificial neural networksThe architecture is loosely modeled after the brain structure. Trained to recognize complex patterns, these networks support language creation, image recognition, and other uses of artificial intelligence today.

Born in Chicago (United States) in 1933, Hopfield is the creator of the “Hopfield network”. simulates the functioning of the human brain and has the ability to store and reconstruct information. Previously professor emeritus at Princeton University (USA), he devoted himself to molecular biology.

Hinton was born in London (United Kingdom) in 1947 and created the “Boltzmann machine” using information from the Hopfield network. Generative model that can identify patterns when fed with examples. In addition to being a researcher at the University of Toronto, he also served as a consultant to Google.

Warning about the risks of artificial intelligence

Despite his contribution to the development of artificial intelligence, he is one of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, Warnings about the risks of technology. Hinton said last year: New York Times He says a part of him “now regrets his life’s work.”

The “Godfather of Artificial Intelligence”, who is also known as a computer scientist in 2023, Justified Google’s departure as a way to draw attention to potential risks of AI. The neural network company he founded with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was acquired by the search giant in 2013.

The issue was discussed again by Hinton in an interview following the awards ceremony. The artificial intelligence pioneer said: Humanity has no experience dealing with “things smarter than us” And these advances can have bad consequencesespecially if the technology gets “out of control”.