Nobel prize in physics goes to machine learning pioneers

A view of the sign for the Nobel Prize in Physics in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, October 8, 2024. REUTERS/ Tom Little

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -U.S. scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries and inventions that laid the foundation for machine learning, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

Hinton has been widely credited as a godfather of artificial intelligence and made headlines when he quit his job at Google last year to be able to more easily speak about the dangers of the technology he had pioneered.