Could Information Technology & Applied Mathematics be the 7th Nobel Prize category?

While watching a documentary film on TV with my daughter about AI, we saw a picture gathering 4 heroes of Deep Learning : (from left to right: Yann Lecun, Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio and Andrew Ng).

Picture source: https://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/03/talking-machine-deep-learning-gurus-p1.html

I could not help remembering another picture, the famous one taken in Brussels in 1922 (Quantum Theory 5th International Conference), gathering 17 Nobel Laureates !

Picture source: https://twitter.com/nobelprize/status/748433789517443072

Alfred Nobel defined the 5 first prize categories in 1895 (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace). Economic sciences become the 6th prize category in 1968, established by the Sweden’s Central Bank, in memory of Alfred Nobel.

This might seem crazy, but neural networks are as old as the first computers (Perceptron : 1957). Deep Learning concepts were being developed in 1980’s already! As Einstein could not get material evidences of the consequences of its General Relativity Theory, Deep Learning heroes had to wait the 2010’s period to see the power of these algorithms thanks to the development of GPU’s.

Today, we have the privilege to see in real time the development of artificial intelligence, with the chance for all of us to benefit from this inestimable knowledge thanks to new channels (online courses (MOOCs), videos, blogs, even live courses for lucky people). Science has never been as inclusive, generous and contagious as today.

Maybe it is a good time now to reward these remarkable scientists who reshaped our world thanks to Information Technologies, the list is long, very long. I really hope to see in a very near future the establishment of a 7th Nobel Prize Category, and you?