Nobel Prizes for AI
In plain wordsThe two 2024 Nobel Prizes, in physics and chemistry, that honored artificial intelligence research for the first time, recognizing neural-network pioneers and the protein-structure system AlphaFold.
The pair of 2024 Nobel Prizes that for the first time recognized research in artificial intelligence. The physics prize, announced on 8 October 2024, went to John HopfieldJohn Hopfield, prop. n.: An American physicist who showed in 1982 how a network of simple units can store and recall memories, and who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for work that enabled machine learning. and Geoffrey HintonGeoffrey Hinton, prop. n.: A British-Canadian scientist whose decades of persistent work on brain-inspired neural networks laid the foundations of modern AI; often called a 'godfather of AI', he now warns publicly about its dangers. 'for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks', citing the Hopfield networkHopfield network, n.: A network of on–off units, all connected to one another, that stores patterns as stable states. Given a partial or noisy pattern, it settles into the closest stored one, like recalling a memory from a hint. and the Boltzmann machineBoltzmann machine, n.: A network of randomly flipping on–off units, including hidden ones, that learns the statistical patterns in its training data and can then produce new examples like them. and their roots in statistical physics. The chemistry prize, announced the next day, went half to David Baker for computational protein design and half to Demis HassabisDemis Hassabis, prop. n.: A British AI researcher and former chess prodigy who co-founded DeepMind, led the teams behind AlphaGo and AlphaFold, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. and John Jumper of Google DeepMindGoogle DeepMind, prop. n.: Google's main artificial intelligence laboratory, formed in 2023 by joining DeepMind and Google Brain. It builds the Gemini models and scientific AI systems such as AlphaFold. for protein structure prediction with AlphaFoldAlphaFold, prop. n.: A DeepMind AI system that predicts the 3D shape of proteins from their chemical sequence, often about as accurately as laboratory experiments. It cracked a problem biologists had worked on for 50 years and won a Nobel Prize.. The awards were widely read as institutional recognition of AI's scientific importance; some physicists questioned whether neural-network research belonged under physics, and Hinton used the occasion to warn of AI's risks. The 2025 and 2026 physics and chemistry prizes went to work in other fields (the 2026 physics prize to Francis Halzen for the IceCube neutrino observatory; chemistry to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai).
After the 2024 Nobel Prizes for AI, few still called deep learning a passing fashion.
Origin
Not an official category: the phrase is a journalistic grouping of the 2024 physics and chemistry awards made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Computing's own highest honor is the Turing AwardTuring Award, prop. n.: Nicknamed the 'Nobel Prize of computing', the top honor in computer science, awarded each year since 1966 by the Association for Computing Machinery. Several AI pioneers have received it..
Related
- Hopfield networkHopfield network, n.: A network of on–off units, all connected to one another, that stores patterns as stable states. Given a partial or noisy pattern, it settles into the closest stored one, like recalling a memory from a hint.
- Boltzmann machineBoltzmann machine, n.: A network of randomly flipping on–off units, including hidden ones, that learns the statistical patterns in its training data and can then produce new examples like them.
- AlphaFoldAlphaFold, prop. n.: A DeepMind AI system that predicts the 3D shape of proteins from their chemical sequence, often about as accurately as laboratory experiments. It cracked a problem biologists had worked on for 50 years and won a Nobel Prize.
- Geoffrey HintonGeoffrey Hinton, prop. n.: A British-Canadian scientist whose decades of persistent work on brain-inspired neural networks laid the foundations of modern AI; often called a 'godfather of AI', he now warns publicly about its dangers.
- Turing AwardTuring Award, prop. n.: Nicknamed the 'Nobel Prize of computing', the top honor in computer science, awarded each year since 1966 by the Association for Computing Machinery. Several AI pioneers have received it.
- godfathers of AIgodfathers of AI, phr.: A media nickname for three scientists — Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun — whose decades of work on neural networks underpins modern AI. They shared computing's top prize in 2019.
Sources
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2024). The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024. Press release, 8 October 2024.
Mentioned in
Demis HassabisDemis Hassabis, prop. n.: A British AI researcher and former chess prodigy who co-founded DeepMind, led the teams behind AlphaGo and AlphaFold, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry., Geoffrey HintonGeoffrey Hinton, prop. n.: A British-Canadian scientist whose decades of persistent work on brain-inspired neural networks laid the foundations of modern AI; often called a 'godfather of AI', he now warns publicly about its dangers., AlphaFoldAlphaFold, prop. n.: A DeepMind AI system that predicts the 3D shape of proteins from their chemical sequence, often about as accurately as laboratory experiments. It cracked a problem biologists had worked on for 50 years and won a Nobel Prize., Boltzmann machineBoltzmann machine, n.: A network of randomly flipping on–off units, including hidden ones, that learns the statistical patterns in its training data and can then produce new examples like them., deep learning revolutiondeep learning revolution, n.: The rapid takeover of AI by many-layered neural networks from about 2012, when they suddenly began beating older methods at recognizing images and speech, leading to today's AI systems., godfathers of AIgodfathers of AI, phr.: A media nickname for three scientists — Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun — whose decades of work on neural networks underpins modern AI. They shared computing's top prize in 2019., Hopfield networkHopfield network, n.: A network of on–off units, all connected to one another, that stores patterns as stable states. Given a partial or noisy pattern, it settles into the closest stored one, like recalling a memory from a hint., John HopfieldJohn Hopfield, prop. n.: An American physicist who showed in 1982 how a network of simple units can store and recall memories, and who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for work that enabled machine learning., John JumperJohn Jumper, prop. n.: An American scientist who led Google DeepMind's AlphaFold project, which predicts the 3D shapes of proteins, and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry., Turing AwardTuring Award, prop. n.: Nicknamed the 'Nobel Prize of computing', the top honor in computer science, awarded each year since 1966 by the Association for Computing Machinery. Several AI pioneers have received it.