The decision from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences woke him in the course of the night time. Or fairly, his spouse did. She answered the telephone at their dwelling in Washington, D.C. and screamed that he’d gained the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The prize is the last word recognition of his work as a biochemist on the College of Washington.
“I awakened at two [a.m.] and principally did not sleep by means of the entire day, which was all events and stuff,” he informed me the day after the announcement. “I am wanting ahead to getting again to regular somewhat bit right this moment.”
Final week was a significant milestone for AI, with two Nobel prizes awarded for AI-related discoveries.
Baker wasn’t alone in profitable the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded it to Demis Hassabis, the cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and John M. Jumper, a director on the identical firm, too. Google DeepMind was awarded for its analysis on AlphaFold, a software which might predict how proteins are structured, whereas Baker was acknowledged for his work utilizing AI to design new proteins. Learn extra about it right here.
In the meantime, the physics prize went to Geoffrey Hinton, a pc scientist whose pioneering work on deep studying within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s underpins all the strongest AI fashions on this planet right this moment, and fellow pc scientist John Hopfield, who invented a kind of pattern-matching neural community that may retailer and reconstruct knowledge. Learn extra about it right here.
Talking to reporters after the prize was introduced, Hassabis stated he believes that it’ll herald extra AI instruments getting used for vital scientific discoveries.
However there may be one downside. AI wants lots of high-quality knowledge to be helpful for science, and databases containing that kind of knowledge are uncommon, says Baker.
The prize is a recognition for the entire group of individuals working as protein designers. It should assist transfer protein design from the “lunatic fringe of stuff that nobody ever thought could be helpful for something to being on the heart stage,” he says.