LONDON : The award this week of Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics to a small number of artificial intelligence pioneers affiliated with Google has stirred debate over the company’s research dominance and how breakthroughs in computer science ought to be recognised.
Google has been at the forefront of AI research, but has been forced on the defensive as it tackles competitive pressure from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and mounting regulatory scrutiny from the U.S Department of Justice.
On Wednesday, Demis Hassabis – co-founder of Google’s AI unit DeepMind – and colleague John Jumper were awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry, alongside U.S. biochemist David Baker, for their work decoding the structures of microscopic proteins.
Former Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton, meanwhile, won the Nobel prize for physics on Tuesday, alongside U.S. scientist John Hopfield, for earlier discoveries in machine learning that paved the way for the AI boom.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a computer scientist and advisor on AI to the United Nations, told Reuters that, while the recipients’ work deserved recognition, the lack of a Nobel prize for mathematics or computer science had distorted the outcome.
“The Nobel prize committee doesn’t want to miss out on this AI stuff, so it’s very creative of them to push Geoffrey through the physics route,” she said. “I would argue both are dubious, but nonetheless worthy of a Nobel prize in terms of the science they’ve done. So how else are you going to reward them?”
Noah Giansiracusa, an associate maths professor at Bentley University and author of “How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News”, also argued that Hinton’s win was questionable.
“What he did was phenomenal, but was it physics? I don’t think so. Even if there’s inspiration from physics, they’re not developing a new theory in physics or solving a longstanding problem in physics.”
The Nobel prize categories for achievements
