When the Nobel Prize announced its groundbreaking 2024 winners, shockwaves rang throughout the scientific community, and for good reason: two of the three science categories’ (Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine) winners were scientists who contributed to the advancement of AI.
The Nobel Prize in Physics has historically been awarded to pioneers in the field of physics. Some of the most famous winners include Albert Einstein for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect, Marie Curie for her experiments with radium, and Werner Heisenberg for co-founding Quantum Mechanics. In 2024, however, the Nobel Laureates for the Physics prize were John Hopfield and Geoffery Hinton who “used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning”, according to the Nobel Prize’s official press release. Hopfield invented the ‘Hopfield Network’ which uses a method for saving and recreating patterns. The Hopfield Network is trained to find the most similar image to any incomplete one it is fed. Hinton used this network as the foundation for his Boltzmann Machine which recognizes characteristic elements in any given type of data.
However, Hopfield and Hinton’s achievements have not come without controversy. In 2023, Geoffery Hinton said that he regretted his life’s work. Despite being known as the Godfather of AI, Hinton fears that AI could be too easily misused; he believes it could increase inequality and end up “subjugating humanity.” Hopfield, on the other hand, responded to his victory by suggesting that it would be beneficial to introduce a computer science category to the Nobel awards. Even though both the Hopfield Network and Boltzmann Machine drew from statistical physics, Hinton said, “I was very surprised to get [the Nobel in Physics] because I am not a physicist.”
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was also awarded to scientists working with Artificial Intelligence. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper created an AI model for predicting the structure of proteins, something that had previously been guesswork for thousands of scientists. The AI model is known as AlphaFold2. The third winner was David Baker, who was able to create a new, unique protein without the help of AI. Over the past twenty years, his research has led to new vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and nanomaterials.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was the only science award not featuring computer science developments. Nobel Laureates Victor Ambrose and Gary Ruvkun discovered the role microRNA in post-transcription gene regulation. Gene regulation is the process within our bodies that allows that each cell only selects its relevant instruction, which in turn ensures that the correct gene is present in every cell.
The three other Nobel categories were decidedly more conventional. Writer Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her chart-topping book The Vegetarian; the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo. Nihon Hidankyo members are Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors who seek to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson won the final Nobel award, the Prize in Economic Sciences, for their studies on the relationship between colonized countries and economic prosperity.
It’s undeniable that the 2024 Nobel winners are ushering in a new era of scientific progress, as the growth of Artificial Intelligence exploded in the past few years. Will the Nobel Prize introduce a computer science award? Or will longstanding awards continue to divisively go to AI pioneers? Only time will tell.