The discovery of tools key to machine learning wins the 2024 physics Nobel

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

This year’s laureates “have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said this morning in a press release.

Hopfield, of Princeton University, created a type of memory that can store and reconstruct patterns in data. Hinton, of the University of Toronto, invented a way to autonomously find properties in such data. 

The winners will split the prize of 11 million Swedish kroner, or about $1 million. 

This is a developing story that will be updated throughout the day.