I definitely think their work is deserving of awards, but I kinda agree with other commenters in that this says more about the Nobel committee than anything
i.e. Hinton has already won a Turing Award in 2018, and there is no Nobel for computer science
And this work was already recognized to have impact ~12 years ago, when he auctioned his company of 2 grad students to Google/Microsoft/Baidu/Facebook, for over $40M, ultimately going with Google [1]
---
i.e. IMO it feels a little late / weird / irrelevant to be giving this award in physics to machine learning research – it doesn’t feel like that would have happened without the news cycle
At least IMO the scientific awards are more interesting when they're leading indicators, not trailing ones -- when they are given by peers, acknowledging impact that may happen in the future.
Because it often takes decades to have impact, and it may occur after the researcher has passed away
i.e. Hinton has already won a Turing Award in 2018, and there is no Nobel for computer science
And this work was already recognized to have impact ~12 years ago, when he auctioned his company of 2 grad students to Google/Microsoft/Baidu/Facebook, for over $40M, ultimately going with Google [1]
---
i.e. IMO it feels a little late / weird / irrelevant to be giving this award in physics to machine learning research – it doesn’t feel like that would have happened without the news cycle
At least IMO the scientific awards are more interesting when they're leading indicators, not trailing ones -- when they are given by peers, acknowledging impact that may happen in the future.
Because it often takes decades to have impact, and it may occur after the researcher has passed away
---
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Makers-Mavericks-Brought-Faceb... - good book if you’re interested in how technology transfer happened in the last 10-15 years