The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 has just been announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and has been awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton. While Hopfield, 91, is an American scientist and widely known for his study of associative neural networks, the British-Canadian Hinton, 76, is referred to as the “godfather of Artificial Intelligence” (AI). Traditionally, this prestigious award has honoured achievements in areas such as particle physics, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. However, as science and technology evolve, there has been a compelling argument for expanding the scope of the Nobel Prize in Physics to include outstanding contributions to AI and neural networks. This expansion is justified by the deep connections these fields share with fundamental physics principles and their transformative impact on physics research itself.

At the core of both AI and neural networks lie concepts deeply rooted in physics. The fundamental nature of intelligence and computation is, at its essence, a physical phenomenon governed by the laws of nature. The work of Claude Shannon in information theory, for instance, established a crucial bridge between information processing and physical systems. This connection has only grown stronger with time, as concepts from statistical physics have become instrumental in analysing and improving machine learning algorithms.

Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/is-ai-physics-why-the-nobel-committee-is-right-9612047/