The 2024 Nobel Prize announcements began on Oct. 7, recognizing groundbreaking contributions to humanity. The first prize, in the category of physiology or medicine, went to a pair of American scientists on Monday for their work in discovering microRNAs.

The Nobel committee that honored the science behind machine learning and AI also mentioned fears about its possible flipside.

With work on machine learning that uses artificial neural networks, John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “showed a completely new way for us to use computers,” the committee said.