The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded on Tuesday to American scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian scientist Geoffrey Hinton for their machine learning discoveries and innovations, which helped to spark the rise of artificial intelligence.
The new technology the pair worked on, which is hailed for its revolutionary potential in fields like cutting-edge scientific discoveries and more effective administrative tasks, has also sparked concerns that humanity may soon be outclassed and outcompeted by its own invention.
Many people consider Hinton to be the father of artificial intelligence (AI). Last year he made news when he left Google. He did that in order to talk freely about the risks associated with the technology he had helped to develop.
“We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us,” Hinton said over the phone to the Nobel press conference, speaking from a hotel in California.
“It’s going to be wonderful in many respects, in areas like healthcare,” Hinton said.
“But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences. Particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”
Associative memory, developed by 91-year-old Princeton University professor emeritus Hopfield, can store and reconstruct images and other patterns in data.
“When you get systems that are rich enough in complexity and size, they can have properties which you can’t possibly intuit from the elementary particles you put in there,” he said in a press conference convened by Princeton.
“You have to say that system contains some new physics.”
He expressed similar worries to Hinton, arguing that there was something unsettling about AI’s uncharted territory and promise.
“One is accustomed to having technologies which are not singularly only good or only bad, but have capabilities in both directions,” he said.
According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the two men were given the prize because they “revolutionized science, engineering, and daily life” by using “tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning.”
The two winners of the award split the prize money of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).
According to the academy, Hinton, 76, a British-born professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, developed a technique that can independently locate qualities in data and complete tasks like identifying particular elements in images.
Hinton claimed Google behaved very ethically. Even though he left the firm in 2023 after realizing that computers could surpass human intelligence far sooner than he and other scientists had predicted.
In addition, Hinton acknowledged that he had mistrusted parts of his research. However, he had acted on the facts at hand.
“In the same circumstances I would do the same again,” he told the Nobel press conference.
“But I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”
Asked about the concerns surrounding machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence, Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said “While machine learning has enormous benefits, 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, for the greatest benefit of humankind.”
When Hopfield earned the 2019 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, he stated in a video released online by the Franklin Institute that he had never thought of being anything other than a scientist or engineer. Hopfield’s parents were both physicists.
“They were the ones that understood the world,” he stated.
“What fascinates me most is still this question of how mind comes from machine.”
The prize, which is widely regarded as the most prestigious honor given to physicists worldwide, was established in Alfred Nobel’s will along with honors for contributions to science, literature, and peace.
With a few breaks, the rewards have been given out since 1901. However, the Nobel Prize in Economics was added later. In order to honor the Swedish entrepreneur and philanthropist who made his wealth from inventing dynamite.
Aside from the occasionally contentious selections for literature and peace, physics frequently garners the most attention among the prizes. Previous winners include notable scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Enrico Fermi.
The physics prize for the previous year went to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier for their efforts in producing ultra-short light pulses that can provide an instantaneous picture of atomic changes, potentially enhancing the identification of illnesses.
After American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun earned the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering microRNA and its function in gene control. Which provided insight into how cells specialize, physics is the second Nobel to be given out this week.
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