Hinton: Studied psychology, became cognitive scientist. Schmidhuber: Studied cs and math, developed algorithmic theory of the computable universe. Hinton wins Nobel price in physics.
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Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
561–570 of 876 posts
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#562I find the prize a bit odd this time since it focused on Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines. Picking those two architectures in particular seems a bit arbitrary. Besides, Parisi got the prize last year (edit: actually 2021, time flies) for spin glasses. Hopfield networks are quite related. They could have included Hopfield & Hinton too, and it would have looked more coherent. It is also concerning that lately t…
Parisi won in 2021, not last year. His work was more about establishing spin glasses as a way to study complex systems. Hopfield definitely built on that, showing how those ideas could be applied to neural networks and info storage in state-space machines.
As for focusing on Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines, I get where you're coming from. They’re just a couple of architectures among many, but they’re pretty foundational. They’re deeply rooted in statistical mechanics and have had a huge impact, finding applications across a range of fields beyond just machine learning.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#563Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
This prize is more of a settler colonialist land grab by physicists. ML is just a subfield of physics (like every other field), so let's make sure that everyone knows that it's in our domain. Speaking as a onetime physicist now in ML...
machine learning is math, not physics. physics uses math, not the other way around. ML can be used in any field of science, not vice versa.
The actual process of computation, sure, but machine learning was born from physics-based methods and applications to understand complexity and disorder.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some other recent cases of the prize being given to an engineering contribution: - 2018 was for chirped pulse amplification, which is most commonly used in medicine (LASIK surgery for example) - 2014 was for basically for LED lights - 2010 was for a method for producing graphene - 2009 was for both charge-coupled device, which is a component for digital imaging (including regular consumer digital cameras), and fibre-…
CPA is very very widely used in experimental physics, so I don’t really think it belongs on this list.
Well yeah, so are neural nets. I just meant that these are engineering accomplishments, not scientific per se. Of course experimental science will often take advantage of cutting edge technology, including from computer science.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#566Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#567What if I were to tell you that Physics included more than Theoretical Particles? Are experimental Physicist just Engineers? Are String Theorists just Mathematicians? Is John von Neumann not a Physicist because he also worked with Computers? Awful lot of nit-picking in this thread.
Physics is pretty old and it has always been about understanding the fundamental structure of reality. If it doesn’t tell you how it all goes round then it is not physics: plain and simple.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#568Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#569Earlier 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.
Einstein laid the foundation of quantum mechanics with his description of the photoelectric effect, so you could add transistors, lasers, LEDs, CCD sensors and more to the list. Although I agree that it's doubtful that most of this could have been foreseen then.
Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]
#570eh..is it some kind of hallucination by "NobelGPT"?