Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work developing ‘AlphaFold,’ a protein-generating artificial intelligence (AI). That is the second award within the AI field, following Professor Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto, who won the physics prize yesterday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Nobel Committee announced on the ninth (local time) that CEO Hassabis, DeepMind chief researcher John Jumper, and Professor David Baker of the University of Washington were jointly chosen as winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Heiner Linke, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: “One in every of the discoveries recognized this yr involves the composition of peculiar proteins. The opposite is the success of a 50-year-old dream of predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences. Each discoveries are “It opens up enormous possibilities,” he explained.
In other words, CEO Hassabis and senior researcher Jumper received separate awards for his or her protein research through the event of AlphaFold, and Professor Baker received separate awards for his protein design.
The committee said that ‘AlphaFold 2’, released in July 2022, is an AI model that predicts the structures of most known proteins, as much as 200 million, and called it “an entire revolution in the sphere of chemistry.”
AlphaFold is a model utilized by greater than 2 million researchers world wide, and is evaluated as opening up latest possibilities for brand spanking new drug development.
Also, in May, DeepMind introduced ‘AlphaFold 3’, which works beyond protein structure prediction and predicts how proteins can interact with biomolecules in our bodies.
CEO Hassabis has already won major scientific awards last yr, including the Resker, which is named America’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Breakthrough.
Alternatively, it was predicted that the Nobel Committee wouldn’t award an award to an AI model developer that has only been around for 2 years. Also, CEO Hassabis and others aren’t chemists.
Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee placed emphasis on AI on this award, choosing the AlphaFold team following Professor Hinton and Professor John Hopfield of Princeton University, who won awards within the machine learning field yesterday.
That is in keeping with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which emphasized ‘AI for science’ and chosen AI as probably the most notable technology of the yr. In other words, the atmosphere is encouraging technology that may result in previously not possible scientific developments through AI and solve agricultural, health, climate, and environmental problems.
Meanwhile, Professor Baker, who co-won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, designed a brand new protein in 2003, and since then, the research group has created a series of creative proteins that may be used as medicine, vaccines, nanomaterials, and small sensors.
Professor Baker said he was “extremely delighted and honored” to listen to the news of the award.
Reporter Lim Da-jun ydj@aitimes.com
