Moments after the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences unveiled the winners of this year's physics Nobel, social media lit up, with several physicists arguing that the science underlying machine learning, celebrated in the awards to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, was not actually physics.
The research by Hinton, at the University of Toronto in Canada, and Hopfield at Princeton University in New Jersey, 'falls into the field of computer science,' says Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany.
Many physicists welcomed the news. 'Hopfield and Hinton's research was interdisciplinary, bringing together physics, math, computer science, and neuroscience,' says Matt Strassler, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University.
Anil Ananthaswamy, a science writer based in Berkeley, underscores the significance of the awards, noting that while it may spark debate, it represents a blend of traditional and modern scientific paradigms.
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