Eminent machine learning expert Professor Geoffrey Hinton reportedly used the receipt of a Nobel prize to reiterate fears over the potential for AI to run amok, though noted current generative iterations of the technology remain imperfect.

Hinton and Professor John Hopfield were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their development of methods which underpin machine learning.

The Academy cited Hinton’s invention of a method to “autonomously find properties in data and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures”, along with Hopfield’s creation of “an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data”.

Each development involved “tools from physics”, the Academy explained.

BBC News reported Hinton told the Academy he still worries about the potential for AI to eclipse human intelligence, a concern he has expressed before and which was credited as a reason for him leaving Google in 2023.

The Nobel prize winner reportedly said his concern AI could one day take over from people would not have stopped him commencing his research, even admitting he uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT4, albeit with the knowledge it contains inaccuracies.

Hinton and Hopkins commenced research into artificial neural networks in the 1980s.

Ellen Moons, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, stated artificial neural networks are today used in “a vast range” of research fields in the scientific discipline, including “developing new materials with specific properties”.

She told BBC News the pace at which AI has developed is a cause of concern for humanity’s future.