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

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

#321

Post by quantum_state »

mglz wrote: post #52
aquafox wrote: post #6

"This year’s laureates used tools from physics to construct methods that helped lay the foundation for today’s powerful machine learning." Does this mean if I'd use a deep understanding of birds to design way more aerodynamic airplanes, I could get the Nobel prize in physiology/medicine? Don't get me wrong, their work is probably prize worthy, but shouldn't the Nobel prize in physics be awarded for discoveries in the…

Hm, they have to fit them into Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, or Peace. I guess physics is the closest they can get without a gross missplacement? (Although you might be able to absue literature for LLMs?)

The Turing Prize is for contribution in computing ... History would show this is not a good choice or taste of the Nobel Physics Committee ...

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

#322

Post by comment423 »

seydor wrote: post #203
eleveriven wrote: post #149

A profound moment where physics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence intersect.

very little to do with neuroscience

More to do with neuroscience than you think. Fukushima took direct inspiration from Hubel & Wiesel's nobel prize in the 1960s when developing the neocognitron, which turned into convolutional neural networks. Hopfield networks are a model for associative memory. And, well, then there is the perceptron. There was always a link and mutual inspiration.

Recommended reading: Lindsay, G. W. (2021). Convolutional neural networks as a model of the visual system: Past, present, and future. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 33(10), 2017-2031. https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article-abstract/33/10/2017/9740...

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

#323

Post by varjag »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #216
varjag wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome was positive for Libya, as it experienced only a fraction of human suffering compared to Syria where the United States did not intervene against the regime. Either way Libya operation was spearheaded by France with Obama joining only reluctantly later.

The US intervened in both civil wars, though in Syria its involvement early on was much more through funding and arming of various armed groups - notably Sunni fundamentalist groups. How you can say that the outcome was positive for Libya is beyond me. The country was utterly destroyed. It went from being the one of the most developed countries in Africa to a war-torn country with competing warlords and open slave ma…

Human death toll in Libya and Syria differ by almost 60x. Half a million Syrians could have lived, the refugee crisis and the rise of far right in the West could be avoided had Assad been droned in 2013. Putin would also not have dared the 2014 annexation either.

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

#324

Post by holmesworcester »

alsodumb wrote: post #268
VHRanger wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geoffrey Hinton wins the Nobel prize in physics for giving physics postdocs more reasonable job market options

Lol I almost choked laughing at this lmaoo

...than finance

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

#325

Post by parodysbird »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #208
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…

The methods may be inspired by physics, but they have made no contribution to understanding physical laws or phenomena. It's mathematical/CS work. The connection to actual physical laws or phenomena is even more tenuous than the prize for exoplanets a few years ago. The Nobel prize physics committee has made itself a joke, and probably destroyed the credibility of the prize.

> but they have made no contribution to understanding physical laws or phenomena.

Neural networks are used in tons of data pipelines for physics experiments, most notably with particle accelerators.

The Nobel Prize is also occasionally awarded to engineers who develop tools that are important parts of experiments. 2018 for example was awarded for chirped pulse amplification, which is probably best known for being used in LASIK eye surgery, but it is also used in experimental pipelines.

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

#327

Post by dagw »

eigenket wrote: post #70
noobermin wrote: post #41

May be I should know better, but is there no Nobel category for computer science or mathematics? This isn't physics, this is absolutely embarrassing. May be all those bitter elder physicists who didn't get a prize can feel a little justified in their derision of the institution.

Computer science has the Turing award and mathematics the Fields medal. Neither is exactly equivalent to the Nobel but they're similar levels of prestige. The Nobel prize fields and criteria are a bit random, they're essentially just whatever Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

they're similar levels of prestige

Within their respective fields, not in general. What makes the Nobel so unique and desirable is that everybody knows what it is and is impressed by it. Mentioning that you've won a Nobel prize will impress people and open doors in virtually any circumstance. Saying you have a Turing award will mostly lead to blank stares from anybody outside the field.

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

#328

Post by saithound »

quantum_state wrote: post #310

Feynman would voice his objections if he were alive ... what about nature was discovered? ANN is an application of a variant of Universal Approximation Theorem ...

Feynman was a well-known proponent of AI and neural networks [1]. He even gave popular lectures on the subject [2]. He also claimed that replicating animal-like visual recognition abilities in machines would be Nobel-worthy; deep learning was certainoy a breakthrough in that.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.00083

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRvjS7q1DI

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

#330

Post by varjag »

mafribe wrote: post #248
varjag wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome was positive for Libya, as it experienced only a fraction of human suffering compared to Syria where the United States did not intervene against the regime. Either way Libya operation was spearheaded by France with Obama joining only reluctantly later.

Can you explain why starting a war (still ongoing), killing >10k people, and converting Africa's best functioning and richest country into one of the world's worst functioning places is positive outcome? I don't understand this. The Syrian Civil war was clearly (in parts) engineered by the west. Here is some evidence. - Western government spokesperson in 2003: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328 - In 2…

American military on the ground did not engage Syrian government forces except once in 2018 when they were attacked. They were there only for ISIS.

See the sibling comment for human toll perspective.

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