Why is that? I have video of Teuvo Kohonen explaining neural networks in 1985. "You can stack them" and "when a network has learned a skill, you can sell it as separate entity". What more you want?
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
471–480 of 876 posts
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sort of agree in principle but in practise they've always taken a broad view. Kissinger was one of the most prominent disrupters of world peace in the postwar era but that didn't stop him winning the peace prize. Churchill won the literature prize for defeating Hitler. The blue led guys a few years back didn't do much except make a thing that would go on every single consumer gadget and disrupt my sleep but they wo…
Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect was incredibly important, and incredibly influential on other research at the time. He proposed that light was quantised - essentially the foundation of quantum mechanics. It’s no exaggeration that Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect was as important as special or general relativity, and it had the advantage of strong experimental verification by 1921. The main reas…
I would add to this that it had the advantage of something like 40 years of history as a field that was the basis for some of the biggest advances in instrumentation of that era.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#473Just watched the nobel prize live stream, surprised by the topic, looks very engineering to me rather than physics, do algorithms make physics subsidiary?
I am really surprised. I would have guessed that a Nobel Prize would be awarded to advancements in the field itself. Not for inspirations from it or to tools that led to advancements. Although as I write this I'm sure there have been several prizes awarded to scientists / engineers who have developed tools to advance physics. Like radio astronomy? Still surprised though.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#474So uh, things are not looking so good for actual physics these days, I gather?
Former high energy theorist here: things are not looking so good for high energy physics (both theoretical and experimental) which loosely speaking accounted for maybe 1/3-1/2 of Nobel Prizes in the 20th century. That’s part of the reason I got out. I’m inclined to say astrophysics and cosmology, another pillar of the fundamental understanding of the universe, isn’t doing that well either, probably in the okayish but…
What are you considering "high energy physics"? "1/3-1/2 of Nobel Prizes in the 20th century" is a significant overestimation unless you are including topics not traditionally included in high energy physics. For example, there were many Nobel prizes in nuclear physics, which shares various parallels with high energy physics in terms of historical origins, experimental techniques, and theoretical foundations. But nuclear physics is in a very exciting era of experimental and theoretical developments, so your "not looking so good" description does not apply.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, the prize is about the greatest benefit to humankind according to Alfred Nobel, not the most impressive research. Arguably, the photoelectric effect fits that notion better than GR or any other of Einstein's research. Besides that, Einstein received the prize in 1921, whereas the Eddington experiment in 1919 generally counts as the first experimental verification of GR.
> Arguably, the photoelectric effect fits that notion better than GR or any other of Einstein's research Today we could argue about it due to the importance of solar panels, but that was hard to forecast in 1921. Also, without GR there would be no GPS so it's not like it doesn't bring benefits to humanity.
More to the point, photoemission spectroscopy has been a workhorse tool for understanding the electronic properties of materials for quite a long time now (though perhaps not yet in 1921).
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The US had hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq for over a decade. More than half a million Iraqis died. There was intense violence between different religious groups and political factions. But you come here and say that everything would have magically gotten better with more US involvement in Syria.
A direct American intervention in Syria probably would have made things even worse. Droning Assad, as you suggest, probably would have led to an even greater amount of chaos (besides being totally illegal). It's bad enough as it is that the US funded Sunni extremists in Syria.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do be fair to the Nobel committee, he commit his purported "war crimes" after getting the prize.
He also got it for being half black since by the cutoff date he'd been president for all of 11 days. Had they waited a year they would have had the pleasure of finding out he ordered 50% more drone strikes than Bush did. Content of his character indeed.
We're well into flame war territory here, so I apologize, and am treading carefully.
The list of war crimes I can pin on US during that time is mostly indefinite imprisonment in Guantanamo if you allow for the efforts Obama made to reduce torture.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/09/barack-obamas-shaky-lega...
Drone strikes are not war crimes according to this definition:
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 use…
The techniques highlighted in this prize are not really that useful for deep learning.
You mean besides bringing it into existence at all?
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wait till you hear what they built with all the things we learned about atoms and energy in the 30s and 40s!
There was at least a credible story of fission/fusion for the benefit of humanity. Here, we know that AI is primarily used for target systems, surveillance, opinion manipulation, slop content, etc. If AGI ever succeeds it will be used for eliminating all knowledge jobs. Nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Do you think that systems like Lavender won't be used in the future? Zero chance.
So, the claim is that image recognition and ML (no, wait, broadened to AI?) is primarily used for targeting, surveillance, opinion manipulation, slop content, etc, and that AI has no credible benefit story, and is therefore nothing more than a weapon?
I disagree fundamentally with that, and don't see how we could reach a mutual understanding working from that axiom.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#480Why is that? I have video of Teuvo Kohonen explaining neural networks in 1985. "You can stack them" and "when a network has learned a skill, you can sell it as separate entity". What more you want? https://youtu.be/Qy3h7kT3P5I?si=3Klgib0TaTbiG6dC&t=2477
Hopfield associate NNs was several years prior to 1985.