The Future of Life Institute congratulates John Hopfield and Jeffrey Hinton on winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics and Demis Hassabis, David Baker and John Jumper on winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry I would like to.
Hinton and Hopfield, who are recognized for their contributions that laid the foundation for today’s AI models, continue to warn the public about the risks of AI development.
Please see below for a statement about the award recipients from FLI Executive Director Anthony Aguirre, who also holds the Fagin Chancellor’s Chair in Information Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“The Future of Life Institute congratulates Jeffrey Hinton and John Hopfield on their well-deserved 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. Their research paved the way for modern AI, which promises to transform society, the economy, and the world.
“But just as important, they are sounding the alarm about the potential risks of AI.” I signed an open letter calling for that training to be paused until we can do so. Two months later, Hinton resigned from his job at Google and spoke freely about the dangers of increasingly powerful AI, the increasing risk of losing human control, and the need for urgent action to prevent disaster. Hinton and Hopfield represent the potential for AI to bring incredible benefits to all of humanity, but only if the technology is developed safely and reliably. and without supervision, AI could cause irreparable damage to millions of lives and livelihoods.”
FLI also congratulates Demis Hassabis, Professor David Baker and Dr. John Jumper on winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Their groundbreaking work using AI to decipher protein structures and create new proteins has revolutionized drug discovery and other fields. Importantly, innovations like AlphaFold are designed to solve specific problems, rather than rush to introduce increasingly powerful and risky models that we don’t understand. Our goal is to uncover incredible benefits when safely developing narrow AI and existing general-purpose systems. ”
This content was first published on futureoflife.org. October 10, 2024.
About Future of Life Institute
Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a global nonprofit organization with a team of more than 20 full-time staff members in the United States and Europe. Since its founding in 2014, FLI has been committed to driving the development of innovative technologies that benefit people’s lives and avoid risks at extreme scale. Learn more about our mission or explore our work.
