On Tuesday, scientists John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking discoveries that contributed to the advancement of artificial neural networks. This technology is now vital for the functioning of search engines like Google and online chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The award recognized Dr. Hopfield’s development of the Hopfield network in the early 1980s, as well as a related method known as the Boltzmann machine, which Dr. Hinton helped to create in subsequent years. The announcement caught many physicists and artificial intelligence specialists off guard, including both Dr. Hopfield and Dr. Hinton.
In 2019, Dr. Hinton was part of a trio awarded the Turing Award, often dubbed “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for their collective contributions to neural networks. He gained significant media attention last year after resigning from his position at Google, expressing concerns that the artificial intelligence technologies he helped develop might eventually pose a threat to humanity.
Despite his recognition, Dr. Hinton is not a physicist by training. He has famously recounted being introduced at an academic conference as someone who “failed at physics, dropped out of psychology, and then entered a field with no standards at all: artificial intelligence.” The British scientist, known for his wry and self-deprecating humor, often relished sharing this anecdote but always included a note of caution.