Artificial intelligence just made history again, and not in a sci-fi movie. This time, it's about science's highest honor—the Nobel Prize. In a jaw-dropping moment for both the scientific community and AI enthusiasts, the 2024 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded to AI researchers for revolutionizing our understanding of proteins and quantum physics.
In chemistry, half the prize went to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper from Google DeepMind for developing AlphaFold, an AI tool that can predict the 3D structure of proteins from amino acid sequences. This isn't just about taking cool pictures of proteins; it’s about solving one of the most complex puzzles in biology. The other half went to David Baker from the University of Washington for his innovative AI tools that design new proteins, potentially leading to advances in medicine, materials science, and beyond.
AlphaFold was a breakthrough in 2020 when it accurately predicted the shapes of proteins, a problem that previously took scientists months or years to solve manually. Now, it's capable of predicting the structures of DNA, RNA, and even small molecules like ligands, which are essential for drug discovery. Hassabis calls it a "proof point" for AI's power to speed up scientific discovery, and with over two million researchers already using AlphaFold, it’s making waves beyond lab doors.
Meanwhile, David Baker’s lab has been busy crafting AI models like Rosetta and ProteinMPNN, tools designed to design completely new proteins that nature never could—the kind of proteins that could help solve modern problems like COVID-19. In September, Baker's team even announced a way to target and eliminate disease-related proteins inside living cells, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in molecular biology.
And that’s not all: AI also took home the Physics Nobel this year, awarded to Geoffrey Hinton, who’s often called one of the "godfathers of AI." Hinton's work with neural networks not only helped birth the modern AI age but also translated into breakthroughs in quantum computing and particle physics. During a press conference, Hinton, visibly humble, quipped about leaving physics initially because he found the math too challenging—ironic, considering his AI contributions have now earned him one of physics' highest honors.
So, here we are, with AI winning not just one, but two Nobels in a single year. It’s a testament to the evolving role of artificial intelligence in scientific discovery, one that’s not just assisting humans but actively leading the charge toward new horizons.
- Meta just entered the movie business with Meta Movie Gen: A Cast of SotA Media Foundation Models. Text-to-video, text-to-image, image-to-video, precise video editing, sound effects and background music, all synced. These models can reason about object motion, subject-object interactions, and camera motion, and they can learn plausible motions for a wide variety of concepts. Meta outperforms prior state-of-the-art, including commercial systems such as Runway Gen3, LumaLabs, and OpenAI Sora. https://ai.meta.com/research/movie-gen/
- Apple just released Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02073
- AI-generated images can teach robots how to act https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07875
- BindCraft: one-shot design of functional protein binders https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.30.615802v1
- How AI is improving simulations with smarter sampling techniques https://news.mit.edu/2024/how-ai-improving-simulations-smarter-sampling-techniques-1002
- OpenAI's Ilge Akkaya says the new o1 model series is "trained to think" and this new paradigm can brainstorm about problems, for example with doctors to generate novel ideas for cancer research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPluSXJpdrA
- Sam Altman: "if we can make an AI system that is materially better than all of OpenAI at doing AI research, that does feel like an important discontinuity... the model is going to get so good so fast... plan for the model to get rapidly smarter" https://www.youtube.com/live/-cq3O4t0qQc?si=m0gpVob2O9ORDpiI&t=781
- The U.S. Department of Commerce announced there will be an open competition for $100 million in funding for AI autonomous experimentation into semiconductor materials. https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/10/biden-harris-administration-invest-100-million-accelerate-rd-and-ai
- OpenAI raised $6.6 billion from investors, making the ChatGPT maker one of the world’s most valuable private companies. https://openai.com/index/scale-the-benefits-of-ai/
- OpenAI asks investors to avoid five AI startups including Sutskever's SSI, sources say https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-tells-investor-not-invest-five-ai-startups-including-sutskevers-ssi-2024-10-02/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/6LpaA]
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says a trillion dollars is being spent on data centers to enable the next, biggest wave of AI to revolutionize business productivity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGr2BvqQn9o
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says their next-generation GPU Blackwell is in full production and demand is "insane" as they move to a new AI chip generation with 2-3x performance gains every year https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1842012753160249372
- ‘In awe’: scientists impressed by latest ChatGPT model o1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03169-9
- “ChatGPT's new canvas interface is a game changer. Just used it to create a tesseract/hypercube visualizer with ThreeJS.” https://x.com/bilawalsidhu/status/1841906953083068452
- Google Is Working on Reasoning AI, Chasing OpenAI’s Efforts https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-working-reasoning-ai-chasing-110027962.html
- Tim Brooks, the Sora research lead at OpenAI, is joining DeepMind to work on video generation and world simulators. https://x.com/_tim_brooks/status/1841982327431561528
- Man tricks OpenAI’s voice bot into duet of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/man-tricks-openais-voice-bot-into-duet-of-the-beatles-eleanor-rigby/
- Tyler Cowen asked ChatGPT o1-preview about the fiscal theory of the price level https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/10/ask-chatgpt-o1-preview-fiscal-theory-of-the-price-level-edition.html
- 2 hour podcast created with the help of various AI tools https://x.com/karpathy/status/1841594123381571863
- o1-engineer: A command-line tool designed to assist developers in managing and interacting with their projects efficiently. https://github.com/Doriandarko/o1-engineer
- Hidden traces of humanity: what AI images reveal about our world https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-48/essays/eat-poop-you-cat/
- CV Labs Summit & AI+X Summit 2024: ICP showcased its on-chain AI, blockchain integration, and cybersecurity solutions. Panels covered topics like ckBTC and AI smart contracts.
- Network Fee Surge: A 5804.5% increase in ICP network fees reported by Token Terminal, indicating ecosystem growth.
- Omnity Expansion: Now supports Ethereum along with ICP and Bitcoin.
- PrimeVault Launch: Institutional access to large-scale asset management using ICP.
- Tangem Cold Wallet: The first ring-shaped cold wallet now supports ICP.
- KongSwap Beta: Trading platform KongSwap went live in beta.
- Ed25519 Signatures on Mainnet: Support for Ed25519 signatures is now available, used by Solana and Cardano.
Learn more about the Internet Computer Protocol on dfinity.org and witness YRAL's Web3.0 revolution on ICP at https://bit.ly/4ec2V2f
