Comment from Dr. Shun-ichi Amari, RIKEN Honorary Science Advisor, Former Director, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, regarding the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics
Comment from Dr. Shun-ichi Amari, RIKEN Honorary Science Advisor, Former Director, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, regarding the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics
October 10, 2024
I am very pleased that this year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Dr. Geoffrey Hinton and Dr. John Hopfield in the field of artificial intelligence. Physics is a discipline that originally sought to understand the “laws of matter”, but it has now broadened its scope to include the “laws of information”, which could be called the “laws of things”. Indeed, physics has crossed boundaries. The origins of research into artificial intelligence and neural network theory can in part be traced to Japan, and the results of this research have been leveraged internationally to bring us to the age of AI that we live in today.
Starting with the stochastic gradient descent learning method for multilayer neural networks, Dr. Hinton not only made many groundbreaking achievements, including Boltzmann machines and information integration, but also predicted that deep neural networks could perform advanced information discrimination, and achieved groundbreaking results by adding numerous innovations to this. He opened up a new path for artificial intelligence.
Dr. Hopfield proposed the idea of associative memory in neural networks, and led this field by using computer simulations to assess its capacity, attracting many theoretical physicists to the field. The idea of associative memory has been further generalized and is now used as an attention mechanism in large-scale generative models.
Of course, we should not only be impressed by this achievement, but also be concerned about the impact of AI development on society and human civilization.
Shun-ichi Amari
Born in Tokyo on January 3, 1936. Amari has a wide range of interests in mathematical engineering, and has researched topics such as circuit network theory using topological geometry, continuum mechanics using differential geometry (physical space theory), information theory, learning and pattern recognition, and neural network theory.
In recent years, he has proposed the field of information geometry, which provides a common theoretical foundation for statistics, systems theory, information theory, and other such fields, and is building a system of information mathematics based on this. He is internationally known as a pioneer in the field of AI research for these achievements.
Amari has received numerous awards, including the Japan Academy Prize; the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon; Person of Cultural Merit; and the Order of Culture.
Careers
April 1996 -
Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo
October 1, 1994 - September 30, 1999
Group Director, Brain Information Processing Group, RIKEN Frontier Research Program
October 1, 1999 - March 31, 2000
Group Director, Brain-Style Information Systems Research Group, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
April 1, 2000 - March 31, 2003
Deputy Director, Brain-Style Information Systems Research Group, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
April 1, 2003 - March 31, 2008
Center Director, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
April 1, 2006 - March 31, 2009
Unit Leader, Amari Unit, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
April 1, 2008 - March 31, 2018
Senior Advisor, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
April 1, 2009 - March 31, 2017
Team Leader, Laboratory for Mathematical Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
