STOCKHOLM — Two pioneers of artificial intelligence – John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton – won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.
Hinton, who is known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto. Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.
“These two gentlemen were really the pioneers,” Nobel physics committee member Mark Pearce said. “They … did the fundamental work, based on physical understanding which has led to the revolution we see today in machine learning and artificial intelligence.”
The artificial neural networks – interconnected computer nodes inspired by neurons in the human brain – the researchers pioneered are used throughout science and medicine and “have also become part of our daily lives, …