Duo wins Physics Nobel for key breakthroughs in AI

(UPDATE) STOCKHOLM — American John Hopfield and British Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for pioneering work in the development of artificial intelligence.

The pair were honored «for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,» the jury said.

«These artificial neural networks have been used to advance research across physics topics as diverse as particle physics, material science and astrophysics,» Ellen Moons, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said.

Moons also noted that these tools have also become part of our daily lives, including in facial recognition and language translation.

While lauding the potential of AI, Moons noted that «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,» she said.

Hopfield, a 91-year-old professor at Princeton University, was spotlighted for having created «an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data.»

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'Flabbergasted'

The jury said Hinton, a 76-year-old professor at the University of Toronto, «invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.»

«I'm flabbergasted; I had no idea this would happen,» Hinton told reporters via a phone interview as the laureates were announced in Stockholm.

Hinton said he was an avid user of AI tools such as ChatGPT but also conceded that he had concerns about the potential impact of the technology he helped spawn.

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«In the same circumstances, I would do the same again, but I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control,» the researcher added.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is the second Nobel of the season after the Medicine Prize on Monday was awarded to American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun.

The US duo were honored for their discovery of microRNA and its role in how genes are regulated.

Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes honor those who have, in