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STORY: :: The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to machine learning pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton

:: Stockholm, Sweden

:: Hans Ellegren, Secretary General, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

"John Hopfield, Princeton University, USA and Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto, Canada, for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

:: Voice of Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel physics laureate

“I'm flabbergasted. I had no idea this would happen. I'm very surprised.”

:: October 8, 2024

"We have no experience of what it's like to have things smarter than us, and it's going to be wonderful in many respects. In areas like healthcare, it's going to give us much better healthcare. In almost all industries, it's going to make them more efficient. People are going to be able to do the same amount of work with an AI assistant in much less time. It'll mean huge improvements in productivity, but we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”

The award comes with a prize sum of $1.1 million, which is shared between the winners if there are several. The physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Widely considered the most prestigious prize for physicists across the world, it was created, along with awards for achievements in science, literature and peace, in the will of Alfred Nobel.

The prizes have been awarded with a few interruptions since 1901, though the Nobel economics honor is a later addition in memory of the Swedish businessman and philanthropist, who had made a fortune from his invention of dynamite.