AI just won a Nobel Prize for its ability to predict protein structures

Artificial intelligence has won its second Nobel prize with Google engineers creating an AI capable of predicting protein structures.

AI just won a Nobel Prize for its ability to predict protein structures
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Junior Editor
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Artificial intelligence systems have now become so sophisticated they are being awarded Nobel prizes for their academic achievements, and now AI has gained its second Nobel prize, but this time for protein prediction.

AI just won a Nobel Prize for its ability to predict protein structures 56156165156

Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose work on deep learning is the foundation of all AI models currently used today, was awarded a Nobel prize, along with Princeton University professor John Hopfield. Both researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their contributions to deep learning technologies, which have become the underpinning technology we now broadly call AI.

Now, AI has done it again, with a Nobel Prize being given to Demis Hassabis, the cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and John M. Jumper, a director at DeepMind, for the creation of an AI capable of accurately predicting the structures of protein. Half of the Nobel Prize is awarded to Hassabis and Jumper, and the other half is awarded to David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, who was recognized for his work on computational protein design. Each of the prize winners shares a $1 million pot.

Why is this creation important? Being able to accurately predict protein structures has many big implications as it will mean researchers are able to develop a deeper understanding of human health, the emergence of life, and the creation of lifesaving drugs like the cure for cancer - all through understanding how protein structures work.

"[Proteins] evolved over the course of evolution to solve the problems that organisms faced during evolution. But we face new problems today, like covid. If we could design proteins that were as good at solving new problems as the ones that evolved during evolution are at solving old problems, it would be really, really powerful," Baker told MIT Technology Review in 2022

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Junior Editor

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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