Google’s Nobel laureates spark debate over AI research Reuters

By Martin Coulter

LONDON (Reuters) – This week’s awarding of Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics to a small number of artificial intelligence pioneers affiliated with Google (NASDAQ: ) has sparked debate over the company’s dominance of research and how breakthroughs should be recognized in the field of informatics.

Google has been at the forefront of AI research, but has been forced to be on the defensive as it deals with competitive pressure from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and growing regulatory scrutiny from the US Department of Justice.

On Wednesday, Demis Hassabis – co-founder of Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence unit – and colleague John Jumper were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with American biochemist David Baker, for their work decoding the structures of microscopic proteins.

Former Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton, meanwhile, won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, along with American scientist John Hopfield, for earlier breakthroughs in machine learning that paved the way for the AI ​​boom.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a computer scientist and adviser on AI at the United Nations, told Reuters that while the work of the recipients deserved recognition, the lack of a Nobel Prize in mathematics or computer science skewed the result.

“The Nobel Prize committee doesn’t want to miss these things with artificial intelligence, so it’s very creative of them to push Geoffrey down the path of physics,” she said. “I would say both are dubious, but they still deserve a Nobel Prize for the science they’ve done. So how else are you going to reward them?”

Noah Giansiracusa, an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University and author of “How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News,” also argued that Hinton’s win was debatable.

“What he did was phenomenal, but was it physics? I don’t think so. Even if there is inspiration from physics, they’re not developing a new theory in physics or solving a long-standing problem in physics.”

The Nobel Prize categories for achievements in medicine or physiology, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were established in the will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895. The economics prize is a later addition established with an endowment from the Swedish side. central bank in 1968.

Dominance

US regulators are currently eyeing Google for a potential break-up that could force it to divest parts of its business, such as the Chrome browser and Android operating system, which some say allow it to maintain an illegal monopoly searching online.

The profits from its leadership position have allowed Google and other Big Tech companies to outpace traditional academia in publishing groundbreaking AI research.

Hinton himself has expressed some regrets about his life’s work, quitting Google last year to speak freely about the dangers of AI and warning that computers could become smarter than humans much sooner than expected previous.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, he said: “I wish I had some kind of simple recipe where if you do this everything will be fine, but I don’t, especially in terms of the threat existential of these things. out of control and takeover.”

When he left Google in 2023 because of his concerns about artificial intelligence, Hinton said the company itself acted very responsibly.

For some, this week’s Nobel prize wins underscore how difficult it is becoming for traditional academia to compete. Giansiracusa told Reuters that more public investment in research is needed.

“A lot of Big Tech isn’t about the next deep learning breakthrough, it’s about making money pushing chatbots or putting ads all over the internet,” he said. “There are areas of innovation, but a lot of it is very unscientific.”