Nobel Prize in Physics: Artificial Intelligence Revolution Through Super Machine | Life and knowledge

2024-10-08 18:16:04

Why does my streaming provider actually know what movies I might like? And how does the cell phone recognize whether a mushroom is poisonous or edible? Simple answer: artificial intelligence, or AI for short, does this.

Artificial intelligence refers to technologies that were previously mastered only by humans: namely learning, sorting out useless knowledge, drawing conclusions and making decisions from them.

And this is precisely the purpose of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded to two professors: a super machine capable of doing everything faster and better than us humans.

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Neural networks are the basis of this modern technology. These networked systems have processing nodes on multiple levels, similar to the neuronal connections in ours Brain.

Artificial neurons send impulses back and forth at the speed of light. Every right decision strengthens the connection and the network learns.

Their networks have revolutionized artificial intelligence

The American physicist John Hopfield developed the Hopfield network in 1982, which can also recognize and assign incomplete patterns.

▶︎ An example from everyday life: do you take a blurry photo of a mushroom with your mobile phone and no longer know what exactly it is? The artificial intelligence of a mobile app recognizes the structures and reveals which mushroom it might be.

The winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics: Professor John Hopfield (now aged 91, left) of Princeton University and Professor Geoffrey Hinton (now aged 76) of the University of Toronto

Photo: AP

British-born Professor Geoffrey Hinton further expanded this Hopfield network. He used it as the basis for a new network. This allows the AI ​​to recognize patterns that have not yet been learned, based on probabilities.

▶︎ Explanation using the mushroom photo: Although the AI ​​cannot name the exact type of mushroom, it can tell you whether it is edible or poisonous. This is possible because edible mushrooms have certain properties, such as: a light stem and sponge under the cap.

And with similar intuitive learning processes, artificial intelligence also recognizes our tastes when it comes to films, series and music.

The Nobel Prize for Physics is endowed with eleven million crowns (almost 970,000 euros). “Thanks to their discoveries based on the fundamentals of physics, the two prize winners have shown us a completely new way of using computers,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, justifying the prize.

And the committee underlines: “Thanks to their work, humanity now has a new tool at its disposal. Machine learning based on such neural networks is currently revolutionizing science, technology and our daily lives.”