How did a computer scientist such as Geoffrey Hinton manage to win a Nobel Prize in physics when computer science already has its own Nobel Prize equivalent in the Turing Awards?

There you go.^†

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:

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"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."

"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"

They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.

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You can have your cake and eat it too

When he's standing, in front of you

In awarding prizes, the Nobel Committees often seem only marginally more competent than MTG is at explaining meteorology. And if they can give a literature prize for lyrics like:

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(Mumbles of assent)

"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

What do bad boys know that nice guys don't?

Whatever.

Whatever.

"Hey guys, AI is pretty big so let's centre our prizes on it this year. We can get some attention, and it's all about advertising, at the end of the day, isn't it?"

Neuroscientists discover biological mechanism that helps the brain ignore irrelevant information - PsyPost

… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).

When AI takes all jobs how will the lowest class make money to survive?

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"

[Younger voice] "But wait a minute, Ising-Lenz goes back to the 1920's. And didn't Hinton plagiarise rather a lot? He also didn't invent modern backprop, did he, that's Linnainmaa? And Amari preceded Hopfield, too. That's not a good look."

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A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

[Older voice] "Mmm. What about Hinton, he's widely regarded? Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"

What would happen if the US government told the British government in no uncertain terms all RAF bases with USAF personnel now must follow the Constitution and us law, and if the UK tried to defy this, the US military would directly attack the UK?

[The basic structure of artificial neural networks] has close similarities with spin models in statistical physics applied to magnetism or alloy theory. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes research exploiting this connection to make breakthrough methodological advances in the field of ANN.

In December 1973, when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, comedian Tom Lehrer dropped his mic and stamped on it—satire had just died.

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

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