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Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

nobelprize.org

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Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#111

Post by deepnet »

As a former Alumni of Hinton’s MOOC I can attest to his humble, kind nature and clarity, & erudition as a teacher.

Modelling learning as entropy, and heat in his Boltzmann machines was genius as was the 1980s backdrop paper.

Geoff tirelessly evangelised neural nets and machine learning right from his 1970s phd days at Edinburgh.

Despite being in the academic wilderness during the many decades of symbolic AI.

Moore’s law ( & parallel processing via GPUs ) finally caught up with Geoff’s vision and proved him right.

Well deserved !

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#112

Post by haunter »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #82
Urahandystar wrote: post #25

[flagged]

This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards, and a significant difference in the peace award is that intent is awarded not results. The dude who invented the MAD doctrine did not get the award despite nuke deterrance doctrice being related to the least amount of wars in any century since WW2. But his platform of deescalation and his plans for american foregin diplomac…

> This is such a tired reply. The peace prize is not part of the same group as the other awards

It’s called a Nobel prize and it was established by the will of Alfred Nobel. So yes it’s the same

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#113

Post by alkonaut »

amelius wrote: post #78
elashri wrote: post #66

As a physicist, my reaction to this is how bizarre is that. Maybe he deserves a nobel prize but in physics? Also arguing that NN is used in physics so we can argue nobel prize is okay is like asking for Stephan Wolfram to be awarded Nobel prize for Mathematica which is much more used in physics as a tool. And he is a physicist and had contributions to the field of numerical relativity (The reason he created Mathemati…

It feels a bit like the field of physics claiming the invention of AI, where we all know that mathematics and/or CS deserve the honor.

I think the Nobel prize doesn't want any scientific advance to fall outside the range of awards entirely.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#114

Post by lr1970 »

elashri wrote: post #66

As a physicist, my reaction to this is how bizarre is that. Maybe he deserves a nobel prize but in physics? Also arguing that NN is used in physics so we can argue nobel prize is okay is like asking for Stephan Wolfram to be awarded Nobel prize for Mathematica which is much more used in physics as a tool. And he is a physicist and had contributions to the field of numerical relativity (The reason he created Mathemati…

By this definition Claude Shannon (the father of Information Theory) clearly deserves a Nobel in Physics. The central concept in Information Theory is Entropy which is defined literally the same way as in Physics. And Shannon's Information Theory clearly revolutionized our life (tele-communications) much more than Hopfield network or Hinton's Boltzmann machine.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#115

Post by openrisk »

huijzer wrote: post #69

In some sense it makes sense to award AI researchers on behalf of the physics community because I know many physics PhD’s who thank their job to AI; they work as data scientist now. Jokes aside, physics is a bit stuck because it’s hard to do experiments at the boundaries of what we know, as far as I understand. So then it makes sense I guess to award people who made useful tools for physics.

> it’s hard to do experiments at the boundaries of what we know

this applies primarily to fundamental physics. There are many areas of applied physics (materials, fusion, biophysics, atmospheric physics, etc. etc.) where the main constrain is understanding complex systems. These areas are quite crucial for society.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#116

Post by [deleted] »

simiones wrote: post #96
vichle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate, which wars did he start? (honest question)

In addition to the other replies, he is the only US president in modern history to explicitly authorize the assassination of a US citizen without a trial, and create a legal doctrine allowing future presidents to do so; and he was the major escalator of the use of drone strikes in war (the practice started with Bush, but it expanded many fold under Obama).

[deleted]

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#117

Post by ak_111 »

The contrast in discoveries made in 'core' physics in the first 25 years of the last centuries compared to this century is quite insane, it was never going to be sustainable. If it did sustain we would be colonising a new galaxy by now.

Consider that in 1900 the atom wasn't discovered yet, within around 25 years the basic principles of quantum physics were established, to say nothing about discoveries in cosmology (GR + big bang).

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]

#119

Post by selimthegrim »

nabla9 wrote: post #79

Most commenters here don't know that Boltzmann machines and associative memories existed in condensed matter physics long before they were used in cognitive science or AI. The Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glass is a Hopfield network with random initialization. Boltzmann machine is Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model with external field. This is price in physics given to novel use of stochastic spin-glass modelling…

Also double descent was discovered already by physicists in 80s-90s
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