The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their foundational contributions to machine learning with artificial neural networks, a key technology in artificial intelligence.
Their work laid the groundwork for modern AI systems—Hopfield invented associative memory structures (Hopfield network), while Hinton developed the Boltzmann machine, enabling computers to learn from data and recognize complex patterns.
This marks the first time Nobel Committees explicitly honored contributions in artificial intelligence, recognizing its transformative global impact, from digital medicine to large language models.
