Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’ who warned of its existential risk, awarded Nobel Prize for Physics

• Geoffrey Hinton and John J. Hopfield have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• The pair won for their inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.
• Hinton and Hopfield’s work advances image recognition and data pattern reconstruction.

Geoffrey Hinton, often dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” and John J. Hopfield have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday that it had recognized Hinton and Hopfield “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

Hopfield developed a method to “store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data”, and Hinton created a way to “autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures,” the Academy said in a statement.

Hinton is a renowned figure in the field of artificial intelligence who has been outspoken about the risks that AI could pose to humanity as Big Tech firms race to create their own AI models.

The British-Canadian previously told Business Insider that people should be “very concerned” about the progression of AI.

The computer scientist has been widely regarded as a pioneer of machine learning. He spent more than a decade at Google before quitting in May 2023.

Posting about his resignation on X at the time, Hinton wrote: “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.”

He is now a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.

The Nobel Foundation didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.