Thoughts on Nobel Prize of Physics 2024

This year’s Nobel Prize of Physics is granted to the inventers of Artificial Neural Network (ANN). As someone who have worked on both Physics and Machine Learning, I wonder what this implies - the power of ANN lies in making predictions without understanding the underlying mechanisms, while physics is precisely about making predictions by finding out the underlying mechanisms. Is that a shift in regime? 🤔

Regardless, the rise of ANN has created tonnes of job opportunities for physicists, which is an invaluable contributions to the physics community (as faculty/staff scientist positions are very limited). As an international PhD grad in the US, I’m glad that USCIS can no longer complain about Physics degrees being irrelevant to machine learning for H-1B Visa applications! 🥳🎉