Nobel Prize in physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for work on artificial intelligence

“Although computers cannot think, machines can now mimic functions such as memory and learning. This year’s laureates in physics have helped make this possible,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement.

The committee announced the prestigious honor, seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, in Sweden on Monday. The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

Hopfield at Princeton University and Hinton at the University of Toronto were praised for laying the foundations for the machine learning that powers many of today’s products.

“Using fundamental concepts and methods from physics, they have developed technologies that use structures in networks to process information,” the committee said. This has caused the development of machine learning to “explode” over the past two decades, it added.

Hinton, who has been dubbed the “godfather” of artificial intelligence (AI), said he was “flabbergasted” to receive the prize.

Asked by reporters about the potential significance of the technology his research has helped to develop, he said AI will have a “huge influence” on our societies.

“It will be comparable with the industrial revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us,” he said in a phone interview after the announcement.

Hinton predicted the technology would revolutionize things such as healthcare, leading to a “huge improvement in productivity.”

“But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control,” he cautioned.

-CNN