Dear friends,
Congratulations to Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield for winning the 2024 Physics Nobel Prize! It’s wonderful to see pioneering work in AI recognized, and this will be good for our whole field. Years ago, I was the first to call Geoff the “Godfather of Deep Learning,” which later became “Godfather of AI.” I’m thrilled at the recognition he’s receiving via this most prestigious of awards.
As Geoff relayed in the “Heroes of Deep Learning” interview I did with him years ago, his early work developing the foundations of neural networks has been instrumental to the rise of deep learning and AI. It has been years since I implemented a Hopfield network, but John’s work, too, has been influential. Their recognition is well deserved!
But the Nobel committee wasn’t done yet. One day after the physics prize was announced, Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker won the Chemistry Nobel Prize for their work on AlphaFold and protein design. AlphaFold and AlphaFold 2, as well as the work of Baker’s lab, are compelling applications of AI that made significant steps forward in chemistry and biology, and this award, too, is well deserved!
It’s remarkable that the Nobel committees for physics and chemistry, which are made up of scientists in those fields, chose to honor AI researchers with this year’s awards. This is a sign of our field’s growing impact on society.
While it’s good that people from outside AI are recognizing AI researchers, I wonder if there’s room for the AI community to pick more award recipients ourselves. Best-known in computer science is the Turing Award, which is selected by a broad group of computer scientists, many of whom have deep AI knowledge. Many AI conferences give out best-paper awards. And applications of AI to other fields doubtless will continue to receive much-deserved recognition by leaders in those fields. I’m optimistic this will allow AI researchers to win more Nobel Prizes — someday also in economics, literature, medicine, and peace, too. Nonetheless, this seems like a good time to see how all of us in AI can do more to recognize the work of innovators in our field.
Geoff once thanked me for my role in getting him anointed “Godfather of AI,” which he said was good for his career. I didn’t realize before that I had the power to give out such titles 😉 but I would love for there to be numerous godfathers and godmothers — and many other awards — in AI!
At Geoff's retirement party last October (pictured in the photo above), I spoke with affection and gratitude for all the work he has done to grow AI. Even as we cheer the new Nobel wins for AI, let’s continue to think about how we in AI can do more to celebrate the next generation of innovators.
Keep learning!
Andrew