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‘They don’t just fall out of trees’: Nobel awards highlight Britain’s AI pedigree
- Artificial intelligence won two Nobel prizes within a week for physics and chemistry, and both recognized researchers of British origin in a field that was previously overlooked. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper from Google AI’s DeepMind won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Geoffrey Hinton from the US and John Hopfield from the UK-Canada won the best physics prize.
- The UK comprises a leader in computing science and AI, thanks to its expertise in mathematics, logic, statistics, and engineering achieved decades ago, and then flourished across different clusters in the country.
- The funding environment that the country had to recognize the technology and invest in speculative research for AI and quantum technologies helped create a critical mass of expertise.
- Although multiple universities in the UK still retain merit, technological advancements have transformed the landscape, and the UK must focus more on protecting its academic legacy in AI research and collaborate better with technology firms.
- According to Maneesh Sahani, director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London, and Wendy Hall, a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, creating more centers like the Gatsby unit, focusing only on research, and building tighter relationships between universities and tech firms are essential goals for increasing the UK tech industry’s growth.
- Experts suggest that the UK needs to pay more emphasis to sovereign assets like NHS health data.
- AI industry growth and finance are crucial to the UK’s future, and further investment in the technology is required to get more awards like the Nobel prizes in the future.
- Hinton's insatiable curiosity, creativity, and dynamic attitude, and Hassabis's sense of chasing greatness are the qualities that the UK needs more of to continue winning Nobel Prizes.
- Britain is still a significant player in the AI industry that accounts for billions of dollars worldwide despite the barrage of criticism directed at the UK after it allowed DeepMind to access the sensitive data of the NHS.
- Other countries have shown envy towards British AI research, with research stars such as Hassabis taking more than 20 years to develop, meaning that investment in AI research should, and must, continue.
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