Geoffrey Hinton awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for ‘foundational’ work in machine learning

Geoffrey Hinton, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, was this week (8 October) awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with John Hopfield of Princeton University.

This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning.

The laureates have conducted important work with artificial neural networks from the 1980s onward. Replicating the synapses in the brain with digital nodes, they trained a network, for instance by developing stronger connections between nodes with simultaneously high values. The duo were cited for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”.

Prof Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures. John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data.

Geoffrey Hinton used a network invented by John Hopfield as the foundation for a new network: the Boltzmann machine. This can learn to recognise characteristic elements in a given type of data. Hinton used tools from statistical physics, the science of systems built from many similar components. The machine is trained by feeding it examples that are very likely to arise when the machine is run. The Boltzmann machine can be used to classify images or create new examples of the type of pattern on which it was trained. Hinton has built upon this work, helping initiate the current explosive development of machine learning.

“The laureates’ work has already been of the greatest benefit. In physics we use artificial neural networks in a vast range of areas, such as developing new materials with specific properties,” says Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

Prof Hinton, sometimes described as the ‘Godfather of AI’, is the 122nd member of the University of Cambridge to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

In May 2023, he gave a public lecture at the University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk entitled 'Two Paths to Intelligence', in which he argued that "large scale digital computation is probably far better at acquiring knowledge than biological computation and may soon be much more intelligent than us".

A spokesperson for King's College at the University of Cambridge, said: “We were delighted to hear that Geoffrey Hinton (KC 1967) received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

“King’s has a tradition of pioneers in computer science and his name belongs alongside Alan Turing’s for the impact and influence of his work on global society.”