“Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton among Nobel Prize laureates

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(Bloomberg) –One of the most influential academics in artificial intelligence, Geoffrey E. Hinton, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for training artificial neural networks and laying the foundation for today’s machine learning applications.

Hinton will share the 11 million kroner ($1.1 million) prize with fellow scientist John J. Hopfield, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said. statement Tuesday.

Their work began in the 1980s, setting the stage for the current boom in artificial intelligence, which has been enabled by an explosion in computing power and massive troves of training data. However, Hinton has warned in recent years that AI is becoming too powerful.

Hopfield has created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Hinton is known in AI circles as one of the “godfathers” of the technology, thanks in large part to his early research into neural networks—a kind of machine learning software that loosely mimics the way the human brain works.

In 1983, he co-invented Boltzmann machines, one of the first types of neural networks to use statistical probabilities, and later co-authored a seminal paper demonstrating that a technique for updating the strength of connections in a neural network could impregnate this software. with remarkable learning abilities.

“I’m stunned, I had no idea this was going to happen. I’m very surprised,” Hinton, 76, told reporters gathered in Stockholm by phone.

Hinton warned of the risks of AI while touting its benefits. He left his post on Google’s AI research team last year to speak freely about the risks associated with developing AI too quickly.

He also supported a bill recently stalled by California Governor Gavin Newsom that would have held AI developers liable for any serious harm caused by their technologies.

Asked Tuesday about any regrets about his work, Hinton said: “Under the same circumstances, I would do the same thing again, but I’m concerned that the overall consequence of this could be systems smarter than us eventually taking over control”.

Neural networks that mimic the brain’s ability to process data will be “wonderful in many ways in areas like health care,” he said, but warned that there are “a number of possible negative consequences, particularly the threat of these things escaping under control. .”

Hinton, who was born in London, is affiliated with the University of Toronto, Canada, while Chicago-born Hopfield, 91, is associated with Princeton University.

Among the most famous physics laureates are Albert Einstein in 1921 for services to theoretical physics and Marie Curie, with her husband Pierre, for radiation research in 1903.

The annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

Laureates are announced by October 14 in Stockholm, except for the peace prize, whose laureates are selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.