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British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton and American John Hopfield won the Nobel physics prize on Tuesday for their pioneering work on the foundations of artificial intelligence, with both sounding the alarm over the technology they helped bring to life.
The pair’s research on neural networks in the 1980s paved the way for today’s deep-learning systems that promise to revolutionise society but have also raised apocalyptic fears.
“In the same circumstances, I would do the same again, but I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control,” Hinton, 76, told reporters after the announcement.
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In March last year, when asked whether AI could wipe out humanity, Hinton replied: “It’s not inconceivable.”
The pair were honoured “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”, the jury said.
Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, told a press conference that these tools have become part of our daily lives, including in facial recognition and language translation.
While lauding the potential of AI, Moons noted that “its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future collectively”.
“Humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way,” she said.
