Hinton’s merestone
The decision to designate Geoffrey Hinton the co-laureate of 2024 Nobel Physics Prize is, I fear, bad in the sense that it may further stimulate propagation of versatile AI phobias, attempts of “benevolent” censorship through “countering misinformation,” and other kinds of aggressively weaponized social justice doomerism on the eve of looming elections in the US. Like, don’t you hear? The Nobel laureate himself saith so: “one of the major political parties has tied its fate to the successful propagation of fake news.”
However, more importantly, it is a merestone signifying the much-belated Royal Swedish Academy’s recognition of the fact made obvious by works of Turing, Shannon, Dijkstra, Deutsch, von Neumann, Penrose, and other great minds, none of whom, except of course Sir Jolly Roger, had been awarded even a one-third part of a Nobel.
Information might, and should, be treated as a substance and a substrate of all physical experiments.
Let’s hope we see more Nobels for achievements in AIT and software engineering in the future. But, please, don’t let the Prize to be claimed
by those wannabe saviors of the civilization who, not unlike Hinton, had sown fear — with their infamous Imperial College COVID-19 model.
By the way, I haven’t found any even remotely sincere apology from them.