'What is physics in machine learning?' Physics Twitter furious with 2024 Nobel Prize
- by Indiatimes
- Oct 08, 2024
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Updated: Oct 8, 2024, 20:00 IST
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Two pioneers in artificial intelligence, John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their foundational contributions to machine learning, which is reshaping how society functions but also brings new risks. One of the recipients, Hinton, expressed concern about these potential dangers.Hinton, often referred to as the 'Godfather of AI', holds dual citizenship in Canada and the UK and works at the University of Toronto. Meanwhile, Hopfield is American and affiliated with Princeton University.
Their work in artificial neural networks has influenced various fields, including science and medicine, and is now integrated into everyday technologies such as facial recognition and language translation. Ellen Moons, another Nobel committee member from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, highlighted how their innovations have become part of daily life.
Hinton believes that AI will significantly impact civilisation, enhancing productivity and healthcare, comparing its future influence to that of the Industrial Revolution.
He emphasised that while AI is likely to surpass humans in intellectual capabilities, it also introduces risks, particularly the possibility of machines becoming uncontrollable.
However, a lot of members of Physics Twitter were felt that the award shouldn't have gone to computer scientists.
Here are some of the best laments:
Moons noted the potential negative consequences of AI’s rapid development. Although AI offers enormous benefits, she stressed the collective responsibility humans bear to use this technology safely and ethically for the betterment of humankind.
Hinton, who shares these concerns, left his position at Google to speak more freely about the dangers of the technology he helped pioneer. He has voiced his worry about the possibility that highly intelligent systems could eventually surpass and control humanity.
He was reportedly surprised by the Nobel honour, admitting he hadn’t anticipated it. At the time of receiving the call from the Nobel committee, he was staying in a modest hotel without internet access.
Hopfield, at 91 years old, developed a type of associative memory that can store and reconstruct patterns in data, including images, according to the Nobel committee. In a 2019 video, Hopfield expressed his enduring fascination with the question of how the mind emerges from the machine.
Hinton later built upon Hopfield’s work by introducing a new network, known as the Boltzmann machine, which can learn to recognise key elements within datasets.
Hinton has made notable achievements in the field, including a technique called backpropagation in the 1980s. This method has been pivotal in teaching machines to 'learn' by adjusting errors incrementally. His team’s victory in the 2012 ImageNet competition marked a milestone in AI development, leading to widespread interest and imitation, which sparked the rise of modern AI.
Hinton, alongside fellow AI scientists Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, was awarded the Turing Award in 2019, the highest honour in computer science. Reflecting on the challenges of his career, he recalled how many initially dismissed his work as misguided.
In his daily life, Hinton uses machine learning tools, such as GPT-4, to find answers to questions. While he recognises that such tools can sometimes provide inaccurate information, he finds them generally reliable and highly useful.
Hopfield’s curiosity about the relationship between mind and machine remains central to his research, and his contributions continue to influence developments in AI.
The Nobel Prize for Physics, which comes with a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (£820,000), will be presented at the award ceremony on 10 December, marking the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel.
With inputs from agencies
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