Nobel Prize in Physics 2024: Broken the orthodox mindset of Physics!

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their groundbreaking work on artificial neural networks (ANNs), sparking discussions on AI/ML’s place within physics. Hopfield’s networks were inspired by the behavior of atomic spins, using energy minimization to model neural connections, while Hinton’s Boltzmann machine applies statistical mechanics to recognize patterns in data.

These contributions highlight how physical principles—like energy states and statistical behavior—are foundational to AI/ML, showing that AI-ML is deeply rooted in the physics domain. This Nobel Prize broadens the definition of physics to include its applications in AI!

Deepak Dhar, who shared the Boltzmann Medal with Hopfield in 2022, is celebrated for his statistical physics contributions, including criticality models and fractal analysis. Though their fields differ, Dhar and Hopfield both use the same physical concepts, bridging the gap between AI, computation, and life sciences.

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