DailyPost 2939
WHAT THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZES HAVE TO SAY?
Artificial Intelligence is our future is the message loud and clear from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This institution is responsible for selecting the Nobel Prize laureates. Both Physics and Chemistry 2024 Nobel Prizes have gone to the exponentially expansive field of Artificial Intelligence. It would be very rare for the same area of research study making its way into Nobel Prizes for different subjects and that too in the same year. The deep connect between scientific research, its technological application and simultaneous tectonic impact would also not have happened earlier.
From the Godfather of AI to the Isomorphic Labs, you have it all. It ranges from Machine Learning to protein structures and has the potential to change human existence in primordial ways is the subliminal thought behind the selection. The time covered too is long given the nature of research; at least from 2004 when Hinton and collaborators launched a new program called Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception. Isomorphic Labs peronnas at the core of the cracking the protein code started as late as February 24, 2021.It was established as a spin off from DeepMind.
The current impact of AI and the breakthroughs in the offing would also be playing on the minds of the jury, for 2024 being thought as the appropriate year for this recognition. In all there are five scientists who have shared the honours. The 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics has been shared by John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton. The citation reads the prize was being awarded “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”. It would be very difficult to imagine anything outside its purview today. Just think of ChatGPT, your ready reckoner for everything.
The Chemistry Nobel Prize has been awarded to Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Isomorphic Labs, and John Jumper from Google DeepMind were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. This would lead to path breaking advances in areas such as drug development. The third scientist to get this award is David Baker for his contributions to computational protein design. Demis Hassabis has been leading the world’s AI revolution since the time he founded DeepMind in 2010, later acquired by Google, became famous for AlphaGo, which beat the world Go champion. He heads Google’s AI effort.
THE INTEGRATION OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH WITH IT’S TECH APPLICATION IS AT THE CORE OF THE AI AGE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.