This week, a Nobel Prize for Physics went to Princeton University neural networks researcher John Hopfield. and, more controversially, University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton. It was an easy media story to write up because Hinton offers worries about artificial intelligence that tend to write themselves:

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Hinton is known as the “the Godfather of A.I.” Last year, he made headlines after he resigned from his post at Google and began speaking publicly about the dangers of the technology he helped create. He worries the generative A.I. that powers programs like ChatGPT will eventually outsmart humans and could be used by bad actors to cause harm.

He has said repeatedly that part of him regrets his life’s work. Last year, he told the New York Times’ Cade Metz that he consoles himself with the excuse that if he hadn’t developed the technology, someone else would have.

Sarah Kuta, October 8, 2024

Many dispute this account of AI, citing known deficiencies of computation as a sole method of thinking — and computation is the only thing computers can do.

Why the Nobel Prize for Physics?

About the Nobel Prize award to Hinton, however, some in the computer industry seem to be scratching their heads, according to AI analyst Gary Marcus:

Nobody could doubt that he has made major contributions. But the citation seems to indicate that he won it for inventing back-propagation, but, well, he didn’t…

Even Steve Hanson, a long-time Hinton defender, acknowledged “we agree on the fact that the “Scientific committee of the Nobel commitee” didn’t know the N[eural] N[etwork] history very well”.

Hinton has certainly had a profound influence on machine learning, but it’s still not entirely clear what he specifically won the prize for, or how that has advanced physics. People will probably be asking questions about this particular award for a long time.

“Two Nobel Prizes for AI, and Two Paths Forward“

Marcus offers considerable detail at the link.

Also unusual is the fact that the Nobel for Physics was given to computer science at all. From Smithsonian:

“There is no Nobel Prize for computer science, so this is an interesting way of creating one, but it does seem a bit of a stretch,” says Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton in England and a member of the United Nations’ A.I. advisory body, to the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “Clearly artificial neural networks are having a profound effect on physics research, but is it fair to say that in themselves they are the result of physics research?”

The same question is asked at Cosmos.

It’s hard to rule out the possibility that the Nobel Committee figures that if Hinton is right, they will have been prophetic.