On Tuesday morning, Princeton University professor John Hopfield and University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their fundamental discoveries and inventions that pioneered modern artificial intelligence. .
Hopfield joined Caltech as a faculty member in 1980 and two years later published his seminal paper in which he applied brain principles to computer circuits, creating a neural network capable of memory retention and pattern recognition.
Using Hopfield's network, Hinton created a model that could not only distinguish between different patterns or images, but also generate completely new ones. His development later landed him a job at Google after the tech giant bought his company.
“These artificial neural networks have been used to advance research in physics topics as diverse as particle physics, materials science, and astrophysics,” Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in the announcement. “The laureates' discoveries and inventions form the building blocks of machine learning.”
The researchers will share a prize of approximately 1 million dollars.
Hopfield was recruited to Caltech in 1978 after the university named a new president with a background in physics.
After years of trying to model the human brain, Hopfield finally made his breakthrough in the early 1980s. He called Caltech a “splendid environment” in which to test his various ideas.
Around the same time, Hinton had left UC San Diego for Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where he developed his model based on Hopfield's.
Called the Boltzmann machine, the model formed the basis of current generative AI models like ChatGPT (the “G” stands for “generative”).
Hinton and two of his students created a company based on the 2012 research, focused on using AI to identify common objects in photographs, such as flowers and dogs. Shortly after, Google bought it at auction for $44 million.
Hinton quit his job at the tech giant in 2023 so he could publicly voice his concerns about the technology he helped invent.
He fears that people will no longer be able to distinguish AI-generated images and videos from real ones and opposes the use of AI on the battlefield. Hinton said a part of him regrets his life's work.
