The list of Nobel laureates reads like a collection of humanity’s greatest treasures: Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Francis Crick, Toni Morrison. As of this morning, it also includes two physicists whose research, in the 1980s, laid the foundations for modern artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, October 8, the Nobel Committee announced the winners of the physics prize. They are John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,

The Nobel Institute received 286 nominations this year, but information about potential winners remains tight-lipped.

Two pioneers behind machine learning — a technology that is already transforming society and that carries profound ethical questions — won the Nobel Prize in physics.

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.

Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for research that helped develop the neural networks that are fundamental to modern artificial intelligence.

The awards, most of which date to 1901, are intended to go to those who “ have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind ,” founder Alfred Nobel wrote in his will. Past recipients include the likes of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Three scientists won last year's physics Nobel for providing the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded on Tuesday to scientists in the United States and Canada for their work in artificial intelligence that has become the foundation of powerful machine learning.