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Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry for groundbreaking AI research

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Two Nobel Prizes to AI in 2024! The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the foundational research behind artificial intelligence with the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the work on AI in protein research done at Google DeepMind with the Chemistry prize.

“It is fantastic to see this important work getting this kind of recognition! Especially the applied AI for protein research,” says Johanna Bergman, Director of Strategic Initiatives at AI Sweden.

Nobel Prize laureates in Physics 2024 - John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Nobel Prize laureates in Physics 2024: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton
Credits: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Illustrations of: David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper

Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry 2024: David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. 
Credits: Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”.

During a press conference right after the announcement, Hinton was asked about his predictions about the future:

“I think it will have a huge influence. It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it's going to exceed people in intellectual ability. 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. In areas like healthcare, it's going to give us much better healthcare. In almost all industries, it's going to make them more efficient. People are going to be able to do the same amount of work with an AI assistant in much less time. It will mean huge improvements in productivity.

But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to David Baker "for computational protein design", the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper "for protein structure prediction". “These discoveries hold enormous potential,” writes the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Hassabis, one of the founders of Google DeepMind, and Jumper their model AlphaFold2, presented in 2020. “With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified. Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries. Among a myriad of scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic,” reads the motivation behind their prize.

Taking the next steps

“These two awards solidify the importance of AI and highlight the transformative times we live in. It puts artificial intelligence alongside other groundbreaking scientific discoveries–or as Hinton does–alongside the Industrial Revolution. But as he also stresses, there is a balance between possibilities and risks. The true benefits to society come when we put AI to use responsibly,” says Johanna Bergman, and continues:

“The prize in chemistry also highlights how important AI is as a tool in other sciences when the possibilities that applied AI bring to challenges and opportunities in other fields outside AI itself. At AI Sweden, we are of course extra happy to see our partner Google getting this recognition!"

Technology advancements are part of how to address the risks that Hinton highlights.

Mauricio Muñoz, Senior Research Engineer at AI Sweden:

“AI is a societal issue as much as an engineering or scientific problem. The groundbreaking research done by Hopfield and Hinton made the fantastic developments that we see today possible. What we need now is research and adoption that puts responsible AI use in focus. For example, making sure that models don't reveal the wrong information to the wrong person at the wrong time, and addressing privacy, data provenance, bias, etc to unlock the value from using AI."

Johanna Bergman

Johanna Bergman
Director of Strategic Initiatives at AI Sweden

A portrait picture of Mauricio Muñoz

Mauricio Muñoz
Senior Research Engineer at AI Sweden

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