Nobel physics prize 2024 goes to AI pioneers Hopfield and Hinton

U.S. scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking discoveries that laid the foundation for modern machine learning, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday.

Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the "godfather of artificial intelligence," gained widespread recognition after resigning from Google last year to freely discuss the risks associated with the very technology he helped create. Speaking to the Nobel press conference from a hotel in California, Hinton warned of the unknowns surrounding AI. "We have no experience of what it's like to have things smarter than us," he said. "While it holds great potential, especially in healthcare, we must be cautious about potential negative consequences, particularly the threat of losing control."

John Hopfield, 91, professor emeritus at Princeton University, was recognized for his development of an associative memory model capable of storing and reconstructing patterns such as images, a key advancement in machine learning.

The academy praised the laureates for their use of physics to create methods that serve as the foundation for today’s advanced machine learning technologies. "Machine learning based on artificial neural networks is currently revolutionizing science, engineering, and daily life," the academy stated.

The Nobel Prize comes with a sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million), which will be shared between the two winners.