An American professor at Princeton University and a British-Canadian professor at the University of Toronto won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research that “formed the building blocks” of a key part of artificial intelligence. Since the 1980s, the pair have been using tools from physics to develop the foundations of what is known as “machine learning,” one of the core concepts of AI widely used today. Their research “formed the building blocks of machine learning, that can aid humans in making faster and more reliable decisions,” Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, told a news conference. Hopfield has been a key influential figure in this field since 1982, when he invented the “Hopfield network” — a method widely used since. Hinton used this basis to come up with “the Boltzmann machine,” which can used for tasks such as classifying images.

---

Persons: “, John J, Hopfield, Geoffrey E, Ellen Moons, ”, Hinton Organizations: Princeton University, University of Toronto, Google, Physics Locations: American, British, Canadian, Hinton