AI pioneers Hopfield and Hinton win the Nobel Prize for neural networks

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics to two pioneers whose work laid the foundation for today's artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, even as one of the laureates has become a vocal critic of the technology's potential dangers.

The academy announced Tuesday (Oct. 8) that John J. Hopfield, 91, of Princeton University, and Geoffrey E. Hinton, 77, of the University of Toronto, will receive the prestigious award “for fundamental discoveries and inventions, “that enable machine learning” share artificial neural networks.”

From physics to AI

The work of the two prize winners, which dates back to the 1980s, provided crucial building blocks for modern machine learning techniques. Their innovations in training artificial neural networks – computer systems inspired by the human brain – are fundamental to today's AI industry.

“The laureates’ work has already been of great benefit,” Ellen Moons, chairwoman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in the announcement. “In physics, we use artificial neural networks in a wide variety of areas, for example in the development of new materials with specific properties.”

Hopfield pioneered a type of neural network that can store and reconstruct patterns in data such as images. His approach was based on concepts from physics, particularly the behavior of atomic spins in materials.

Hinton built on Hopfield's work to develop the Boltzmann machine, a more sophisticated neural network capable of autonomously discovering important features in data. This innovation proved crucial for tasks such as image classification and generating new examples of learned patterns.

An award winner's warning: The double-edged sword of AI

In recent years, Hinton has become a vocal voice warning about the potential risks posed by advanced AI systems. In May 2023, Hinton resigned from his position at Google to be able to speak more freely about these concerns. Since then he has been campaigning for more AI regulations.

“I suspect that Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun have missed the main reason why big companies want regulations,” Hinton wrote last year. “Satisfying them reduces your legal liability for accidents.”

The prize is 11 million Swedish kroner (approximately $1 million) and will be divided equally between the two prize winners.

This year's award underlines the interdisciplinary nature of scientific breakthroughs.

“When we talk about artificial intelligence, we often mean machine learning using artificial neural networks,” the commission noted, underscoring the broad impact of the laureates’ work.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is the second of this year's Nobel Prizes to be announced. The medicine prize was awarded on Monday, followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday. The Literature and Peace Prizes round off the week on Thursday and Friday.