Last week was truly astonishing. Two prominent figures in AI, Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis, were awarded the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, respectively. To my knowledge, no one had predicted these individuals as Nobel laureates. The world must be equally surprised. I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect on their achievements and speculate on the future of AI.

1.The Nobel Prize in Physics

Let's start with Geoffrey Hinton, a professor at the University of Toronto, who has been researching AI since the 1970s. In 2018, he shared the Turing Award, a prestigious prize for computer scientists, with two other researchers. He's often called the "Godfather of AI." Now 76, he's still actively working. I actually took a massive open online course (MOOC) he offered back in 2013. It was a valuable lecture that led me into the world of AI. Over a decade ago, courses teaching Neural Networks were scarce, so I was fortunate to stumble upon his lectures. Back then, my knowledge was limited to logistic regression models, so much of what he taught seemed incredibly complex and I remember thinking, "This seems amazing, but probably won't be immediately useful." I never imagined he'd win the Nobel Prize in Physics ten years later. Fortunately, his lectures from that time appear to be accessible on the University of Toronto website (1). I highly recommend checking them out. (The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton.)

2. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient is considerably younger, Demis Hassabis, currently 48. He is a co-founder of one of the world's leading AI companies, Google DeepMind. AlphaFold2 is specifically cited for his award. It's a groundbreaking AI model for predicting the 3D structure of proteins, and is said to have made significant contributions to drug discovery and other fields. He is not only a brilliant AI researcher but also a business leader at Google DeepMind. When presenting to a general audience, he mostly talks about the achievements of Google DeepMind, rather than his personal accomplishments. There's no doubt that the catalyst that propelled this company to the top tier of AI companies was AlphaGo, which appeared about four years before AlphaFold2, in March 2016. The reinforcement learning used in this model is still actively being researched to give large language models true logic and reasoning capabilities. AlphaGo inspired me to seriously study reinforcement learning. I wrote about it on my blog in April 2016. It's a fond memory. (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to David Baker, John M. Jumper, and Demis Hassabis.)

3. Scientific and Technological Development and AI

I completely agree that the two individuals discussed here have pioneered new paradigms in AI. However, their being awarded the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry is a landmark event, demonstrating that AI has transcended its own boundaries and become an indispensable tool for scientific advancement as a whole. Going forward, we need to discuss how to leverage AI and integrate it into all aspects of human intellectual activity. Further development might even lead to the kind of intelligence explosion described by Leopold Aschenbrenner's "SITUATIONAL AWARENESS" that I previously mentioned on my blog, potentially surpassing human intelligence. The implications of these Nobel Prizes are profound.

What are your thoughts? I'm a business person, but I believe the same applies to the business world. With the incredibly rapid pace of AI development, I hope to offer new insights based on a clear understanding of these trends. That's all for today. Stay tuned!

(1) X.post by Geoffrey Hinton, Jan 16, 2019

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