Former Caltech and Google scientists win Nobel Prize for AI work

On Tuesday morning, Princeton University professor John Hopfield and University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their fundamental discoveries and inventions that paved the way for modern artificial intelligence.

Hopfield came to Caltech as a lecturer in 1980 and two years later published his groundbreaking work in which he applied brain principles to computer circuits, creating a neural network that can store memories and recognize patterns.

Building on Hopfield's network, Hinton developed a model that could not only distinguish between different patterns or images, but create new ones altogether. His development later landed him a job at Google after the tech giant bought his company.

“These artificial neural networks have been used to advance research in physics topics as diverse as particle physics, materials science and astrophysics,” said Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, in making the announcement. “The laureates’ discoveries and inventions form the building blocks of machine learning.”

The researchers will split a prize of about $1 million.

Hopfield was appointed to Caltech in 1978 after the university appointed a new president with a background in physics.

After years of trying to model the human brain, Hopfield finally achieved his breakthrough in early 1980. He called Caltech an “excellent environment” to try out his various ideas.

Around the same time, Hinton had left UC San Diego and went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where he developed his model based on Hopfield's.

The model, called the Boltzmann machine, formed the basis of current generative AI models such as ChatGPT (the “G” stands for “generative”).

Hinton and two of his students founded a company based on the research in 2012 that focused on using AI to identify common objects in photos, such as flowers and dogs. Shortly thereafter, Google bought it at auction for $44 million.

Hinton quit his job at the tech giant in 2023 so he could publicly raise concerns about the technology he helped invent.

He fears that people will no longer be able to distinguish AI-generated images and videos from real ones and opposes the use of AI on the battlefield. Hinton said part of him regrets his life's work.