Hinton did introduce the Boltzmann machine networks that kind of resemble thermodynamics if you squint really hard. And those didn't really pan out.

Of course the price is really for MLP backpropagation (or how it found applications) but I guess it's not physics enough.

Hopfield networks never really found use either, but they are sort of related to Ising models and NNs, so I guess it's physics then.

At least they already recognized actual spin-glasses research in physics in 2021. That makes this award for this by-product more puzzling though.

I agree. I don't see how this is physics in any accepted sense of the word.

When Alfred Nobel wrote his will in 1895, there was no computer science or information theory.

One could argue it's closer to mathematics than physics, but if you'd say to him that someone made sand think like a human he might even put it under the medicine category.

It's not clear to me that we have "made sand think like a human" (yet).

Or Obama’s peace prize.

It is different for Peace prize , it has always been political and different from day one , it is awarded by Norwegian noble committee which is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

All other prizes are awarded in Sweden by Swedish academy(for literature) , Royal Swedish Academy for sciences (physics and chemistry) , karolinska institute (physiology) are all professionally established organizations at the time of Nobel’s death with other activities professional organizations do.

Norwegian Nobel committee while in theory independent is just people appointed by the parliament with no need to have professional standing in their field on which they are supposed to award the prize in and it always shows .

Obama’s prize is hardly the first egregious one or even the most outrageous Henry Kissinger got one .

So it kind of matters on the changed standards in swedish technical ones while peace has been disaster for half century or more , with non transparent process selected by ex- MPs

Obama’s and Kissinger’s prizes are both disastrous for entirely different reasons. And I don’t mean anything partisan by that. Kissinger was awarded a peace prize for achieving a cease fire in the Vietnam war … a war in which he’d personally been responsible for some of the worst and most illegal excesses. Obama was awarded the peace prize for literally nothing. It was anticipatory, meant to urge him towards ending American wars in the Middle East (he escalated instead). The Nobel committee gets it wrong looking both forwards and backwards.

It is less about on what reasons made them poor laureates specifically and more important on what is wrong with the process itself

Unless the process of selection of the committee (unqualified, political) and process of selection of the winner(opaque and inconsistent criteria) is fixed we will have poor candidates winning it in the future too

Unlike the economic prize peace was one that Alfred Noble actually wanted himself to be an award given too.

One could also argue peace prize should be the most important of them all. Noble wished to mitigate the military application of his invention, the peace prize should be achieving that most.

The continued poor judgment of the parliament in selecting the committee and the committee in selecting winners devalues the prize for future winners and devalues the good work the Swedish institutions have put in making it the premier award in their fields

> Hinton’s work has nothing to do with physics.

Nor did Jack Kilby's invention of the IC, but they still gave it to him.

You could probably argue the same for the invention of the transistor...

Boltzmann machine does quote physics as its inspiration, they didn't award him for his work in BP and stuff.

But I agree, this feels like a stretch.