Yes, it was definitely a “stretch”. But I think it is cool that the physics community is recognizing the value of cross-disciplinary work.
Thomas G. Dietterich, Distinguished Professor (Emeritus)
School of EECS, Oregon State University
US Mail: 1148 Kelley Engineering Center, Corvallis, OR 97331-5501 USA
Office: 2063 Kelley Engineering Center
Voice: 541-737-5559; FAX: 541-737-1300
From: Tumer, Kagan <Kagan.Tumer@oregonstate.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2024 8:08 AM
To: Dietterich, Thomas <tgd@oregonstate.edu>
Cc: OSU Robotics Mailing List <robotics@engr.oregonstate.edu>; ai@engr.oregonstate.edu
Subject: Re: Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024
Thank you, Tom, that’s a good one. And of course game theory prizes are AI-adjacent (Nash comes to mind).
This said, what was interesting to me was the selection of the recipients and the wording. Hopfield is a physicist so that lends legitimacy to the committee’s decision, though the link between Hopfield networks and current methods is at
best questionable. And the prize is for:
“for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural
networks”
If I were to speculate, I’d say they wanted to give a prize to acknowledge the impact of machine learning and this was the most “legitimate” way for them to do it.
Still a great outcome for the entire field!
Kagan
On Oct 9, 2024, at 12:03 AM, Dietterich, Thomas <tgd@oregonstate.edu> wrote:
Herbert Simon won the Nobel Economics prize, but I don’t recall how much his AI work was mentioned vs his work on organizations and psychology.
Thomas G. Dietterich, Distinguished Professor (Emeritus)
School of EECS, Oregon State University
US Mail: 1148 Kelley Engineering Center, Corvallis, OR 97331-5501 USA
Office: 2063 Kelley Engineering Center
Voice: 541-737-5559; FAX: 541-737-1300
From: Tumer, Kagan via Robotics <robotics@lists.engr.oregonstate.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2024 8:12 PM
To: OSU Robotics Mailing List <robotics@engr.oregonstate.edu>; ai@engr.oregonstate.edu
Subject: [Robotics] Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024
Well, this is an interesting development:
Certainly, Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines are inspired by physics, but at the root, this Nobel prize is for training neural networks. Might be the first truly AI-based Nobel prize.
So, keep coding out there, you never know where it may lead!
Kagan