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British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton and American John Hopfield, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their respective work in “machine learning”, crucial for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), have sounded the alarm on this technology.
The laureates have conducted research in artificial neural networks since the 1980s, paving the way for the promises of AI, a technological revolution that raises concerns even among its inspirers.
“In the same circumstances, I would do the same thing (his research, editor's note). But I fear that the overall consequence of all this is systems that are smarter than us, which end up taking control,” Geoffrey Hinton told reporters after the announcement.
The 76-year-old researcher, a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, is considered one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence. He announced his departure from Google in May 2023 to be able to warn about the dangers of AI.
In March 2023, when asked by an American television station about the “risks that artificial intelligence will wipe out humanity”, he replied that “it (was) not unimaginable”.
John Hopfield, 91, is a professor at the prestigious Princeton University.
The two researchers “used physics tools to develop methods that are the basis of today's powerful machine learning systems”, the jury said in its press release.
They are being honored “for their fundamental discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning through artificial neural networks.” These networks are inspired by the neural network in our brains.
They “have used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets,” Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, told reporters.
– “Very troubled”-
These models “have been used to advance research in fields as diverse as particle physics, materials science and astrophysics, and they are now part of our daily lives” such as facial recognition and machine translation, she continued.
Machine learning “has enormous benefits” but “its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future,” she acknowledged.
The American Hopfield in particular gave his name to the “Hopfield network”, that is to say “an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns”, according to the jury.
The announcement of the Nobel reached him “in a cottage where he is staying in England,” Princeton University said in a statement.
He too has called for a better understanding of artificial intelligence to prevent it from spiraling out of control, calling recent advances in the field “very worrying.”
“As a physicist, I am very troubled by something that is not controlled, something that I don't understand well enough to know what the limits are that we can impose on this technology,” he told a gathering at his university via video link.
Hinton has built a new network using a different method: “the Boltzmann machine.”
He has “invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and therefore to perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in images.”
– “I am amazed”-
“I'm amazed… I didn't imagine this could happen,” he said.
Asked about his favorite tool in the field of AI, Hinton acknowledged that he is a heavy user of ChatGPT, while admitting that he is concerned about the technology's implications.
Thanks to their work, humanity now has a new tool in its toolbox, “which we can choose to use for good purposes,” the Nobel committee noted.
How this work is used in the future will depend “on how we as humans choose to use these incredibly powerful tools, which are already present in many aspects of our lives.” lives”.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes honor people who have worked for “the benefit of humanity,” in accordance with the wish of their creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the Franco-Swedish Anne L'Huillier, the Frenchman Pierre Agostini and the Austro-Hungarian Ferenc Krausz for their research on light flashes that have helped us understand the ultra-rapid movements of electrons in atoms and molecules.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded on Wednesday, before the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday and the Nobel Prize in Peace on Friday in Oslo. The Nobel Prize in Economics, first awarded in 1969, will be awarded on Monday, October 14.
The Nobel laureate takes home a check for eleven million Swedish crowns (over 970,000 euros).
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