Physics’ Nobel prize awarded for a Computer Science achievement, actual physics is having a dry spell I guess
Beyond recognizing the laureates’ inspirations from condensed-matter physics and statistical mechanics, the prize celebrates interdisciplinarity. At its core, this prize is about how elements of physics have driven the development of computational algorithms to mimic biological learning, impacting how we make discoveries today across STEM.
They explain the flex at least
“They used physics to do it” is just a laughably pathetic motivation. Nobel hated “abstract wankery” or “intellectual masturbation” and wanted to promote results which benefitted the common man and society directly. This is incidentally also why there doesn’t exist a Nobel prize in economics. The nobel prize comitte has since long abandoned Nobel’s will in this matter and it is anyones guess what the order of magnitude of spin Nobel’s corpse has accumulated.
I mean we do kind of deserve it. But at least we’ve had a good run.
Yeesh, everyone now jumps on the ai hypetrain.
So it was the physics Nobel… I see why the Nature News coverage called it “scooped” by machine learning pioneers
Since the news tried to be sensational about it… I tried to see what Hinton meant by fearing the consequences. Believe he is genuinely trying to prevent AI development without proper regulations. This is a policy paper he was involved in (https://managing-ai-risks.com/). This one did mention some genuine concerns. Quoting them:
“AI systems threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society. They could also enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities. Especially in the hands of a few powerful actors, AI could cement or exacerbate global inequities, or facilitate automated warfare, customized mass manipulation, and pervasive surveillance”
like bruh people already lost jobs because of ChatGPT, which can’t even do math properly on its own…
Also quite some irony that the preprint has the following quote: “Climate change has taken decades to be acknowledged and confronted; for AI, decades could be too long.”, considering that a serious risk of AI development is climate impacts
Most well-deserved physics Nobel I can remember.
