John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, whose work helped build the foundation for the artificial intelligence revolution in the way we live and work, won the Nobel Prize in physics. Why it matters: Their breakthroughs have shown "a completely new way for us to use computers to aid and to guide us to tackle many of the challenges our society face,

While Hinton’s work catapulted neural networks into the modern era, John J. Hopfield’s earlier breakthroughs laid a crucial foundation.

Geoffrey Hinton, the oft-recognized 'Godfather of AI' and now-vocal alarm ringer for an AI-infused future, just won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in – wait for it – training artificial neural networks using physics.