Duo wins Physics Nobel for key breakthroughs in AI

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to American John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton for their groundbreaking work in the field of artificial intelligence.

“For foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the jury stated that the two were honored.

“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Hopfield, 91, a 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.”

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 that could happen,” Hinton told reporters via a phone interview as the winners of the award were announced in Stockholm.

A diploma, a gold medal, and a $1 million check will be given to the couple by King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the scientist Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896 and the person who established the prizes in his last will and testament.

For their work employing extremely fast light flashes to investigate the electrons inside atoms and molecules, Frenchman Pierre Agostini, Hungarian-Austrian Ferenc Krausz, and Franco-Swede Anne L’Huillier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.

This week’s Nobel festivities kick off on Wednesday with the announcement of the chemistry award winner, or winners, and continue on Friday with the widely awaited prizes for peace and literature.

The Economics Prize winds things up on Monday, October 14.

Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes honour those who have, in the words of prize creator and scientist Alfred Nobel, “conferred the greatest benefit on humankind”.