Almost unnoticed, four Nobel Prizes went to AI researchers this year, even though this discipline does not even exist as a prize category. First, the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo announced yesterday that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics will be shared by the two AI researchers John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton. Both have contributed to fundamental advances in the development and discovery of algorithms for machine learning.
One day later, three researchers shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dennis Hassabis and John M. Jumper are the founders and researchers of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google a few years ago. Among other things, DeepMind developed AlphaGo, a Go program based on a neural network that defeated the Go world champion Lee Sedol 4:1 in a sensational manner in 2016.
With AlphaFold, Hassabis and Jumper have created machine algorithms in a neural network that make it possible to fold proteins and thus make discoveries for drugs and their mode of action. Until recently, this task was considered unsolvable for machines and will accelerate the development of cures for a wide range of diseases.
Bemerkenswert ist an der Entscheidung des Nobelpreiskommittees, dass damit zum ersten Mal KI-Forscher ausgezeichnet wurden. Nicht nur das, gleich vier auf einmal. Und das in einem Moment, wo künstliche Intelligenz große Fortschritte macht und ebenso große Aufmerksamkeit und Diskussionen erregt.
How long will it be before AI – and no longer humans – decides who is awarded the Nobel Prize?
More about artificial intelligence in my book…
KREATIVE INTELLIGENZ
We’ve been reading a lot about ChatGPT recently: the artificial intelligence that can write entire books and is already being accused of putting legions of authors, copywriters and translators out of work. And ChatGPT is not alone, the AI family is constantly growing. DALL-E paints pictures, Face Generator simulates faces and MusicLM composes music. What are we experiencing? The end of civilization or the beginning of something completely new? Futurologist Dr. Mario Herger puts the latest developments from Silicon Valley in context and highlights the sometimes groundbreaking changes that are just around the corner.