Two pioneers of artificial intelligence have won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.

Until this year, the Nobel Prize for physics has typically gone to pioneers in that field, like last year’s winners who used lasers to make breakthrough discoveries about the electron. But 2024 is the year of artificial intelligence, and apparently the hype has reached even the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Two scientists credited with laying the “foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” University of Toronto professor emeritus Geoffrey Hinton and Princeton University professor John Hopfield, were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics today.