STOCKHOLM: US scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton gained the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries and innovations that laid the muse for machine studying, the award-giving physique mentioned on Tuesday (Oct 8).
“This yr’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used instruments from physics to develop strategies which might be the muse of in the present day’s highly effective machine studying,” the award-giving physique mentioned in a press release.
“Machine studying based mostly on synthetic neural networks is presently revolutionising science, engineering and day by day life.”
Hopfield, a professor at Princeton College, created an associative reminiscence that may retailer and reconstruct pictures and different forms of patterns in knowledge, the academy mentioned.
Hinton, who works as a professor at College of Toronto, invented a technique that may autonomously discover properties in knowledge and perform duties reminiscent of figuring out particular parts in footage, it added.
“I’m flabbergasted. I had no concept this may occur,” Hinton mentioned over the cellphone to the press convention asserting the prize.
A pioneer of synthetic intelligence, Hinton stop Google in 2023 and mentioned he did so to talk freely concerning the expertise’s risks, after realising computer systems might turn into smarter than individuals far prior to he and different consultants had anticipated.
“Whereas machine studying has huge advantages, its fast improvement has additionally raised issues about our future,” Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, mentioned.
“Collectively, people carry the accountability for utilizing this new expertise in a protected and moral method, for the best good thing about humankind.”
SECOND 2024 NOBEL PRIZE AWARDED
The award comes with a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns (US$1.1 million), which is shared between the winners if there are a number of. The physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Broadly thought-about probably the most prestigious prize for physicists internationally, it was created, together with awards for achievements in science, literature and peace, within the will of Alfred Nobel.
The prizes have been awarded with a number of interruptions since 1901, although the Nobel economics honour is a later addition in reminiscence of the Swedish businessman and philanthropist, who had made a fortune from his invention of dynamite.
Exterior the generally controversial selections for peace and literature, physics typically makes the largest splash among the many prizes, with the listing of previous winners that includes scientific superstars reminiscent of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi.
Final yr’s physics prize was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for his or her work in creating ultra-short pulses of sunshine that can provide a snapshot of modifications inside atoms, probably enhancing the detection of ailments.
Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week, after US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun gained the medication prize for his or her discovery of microRNA and its position in gene regulation, shedding gentle on how cells specialise.
