Pioneers in artificial intelligence win the Nobel Prize in physics
This photo combo shows the 2024 Nobel Prize winners in Physics, professor John Hopfield, left, of Princeton University, and professor Geoffrey Hinton, of the University of Toronto, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (Princeton University via AP and Noah Berger/AP Photo)
By DANIEL NIEMANN, SETH BORENSTEIN and MATT O'BRIEN
Associated Press
STOCKHOLM — Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.
Hinton, who is known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto, and Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.
“These two gentlemen were really the pioneers,” said Nobel physics committee member Mark Pearce.
The artificial neural networks — interconnected computer nodes inspired by neurons in the human brain — the researchers pioneered are used throughout science and medicine and “have also become part of our daily lives," said Ellen Moons of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Hopfield, whose 1982 work laid the groundwork for Hinton's, told The Associated Press, “I continue to be amazed by the impact it has had."
Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a “huge influence” on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.
“It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he said in an open call with reporters and officials of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects,” 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.”
Warning of AI risks
The Nobel committee also mentioned fears about the possible flipside.
Moons said that while it 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.”
Hinton, who quit a role at Google so he could speak more freely about the dangers of the technology he helped create, shares those concerns.
“I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control,” Hinton said.
For his part, Hopfield, who signed early petitions by researchers calling for strong control of the technology, compared the risks and benefits to work on viruses and nuclear energy, capable of helping and harming society. At a Princeton news conference, he made reference to the concerns, bringing up the dystopia imagined in George Orwell's “1984,” or the fictional apocalypse inadvertently created by a Nobel-winning physicist in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle.”