(MIT Technology Review) – Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose pioneering work on deep learning in the 1980s and ’90s underpins all of the most powerful AI models in the world today, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Speaking on the phone to the Academy minutes after the announcement, Hinton said he was flabbergasted: “I had no idea this would happen. I’m very surprised.”

Hinton shares the award with fellow computer scientist John Hopfield, who invented a type of pattern-matching neural network that could store and reconstruct data. Hinton built on this technology, known as a Hopfield network, to develop backpropagation, an algorithm that lets neural networks learn. (Read More)