(Yicai) Oct. 11 -- Chinese scholars have different views on the awarding of this year's Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics to major innovators in the artificial intelligence field, which is a departure from the normal focus on basic science. Some feel it recognizes the important role of AI in scientific research, while others believe that AI has yet to provide any groundbreaking new theories.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Google's AI research lab Deepmind, and Deepmind Director John Jumper for their work in developing AlphaFold, an AI tool that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. It was shared with David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, for his work on computational protein design.

Deepmind’s work “enhances our understanding and capability to engineer biological molecules,” the Nobel Prize committee said.

It is a well deserved Nobel Prize as DeepMind has overturned the stereotype that protein structures are unpredictable, said Leng Zhe, co-founder of iBOWU, a popular science education platform under BGI Genomics. It marks the beginning of a leap forward in the field of life sciences, he added.

AlphaFold has only been around for three years and the Nobel Prize tends to favor research achievements that are mature and have benefited humanity, said Wu Haixu, the head of the popular science account Biokiwi and a geneticist. While the breakthrough in AI prediction and design of proteins is significant, its applications have not yet been fully realized, and the development cycle for biopharmaceuticals is very long.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to AI pioneers John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for their work in using physics to train artificial neural networks, laying the groundwork for machine learning.

In terms of basic science, AI hasn't provided new groundbreaking theories, said theoretical physicist Liu Yi'an. The granting of the Nobel Prize is largely a form of encouragement.

"The mainstream of our era is AI, so its high prominence is not unusual," Yao Yao, a scholar at the physics department of South China University of Technology, told Yicai. If traditional fields are no longer able to produce impactful applications comparable to those of the past, then it's time to broaden the scope of these disciplines.

"The Nobel Prize committee might believe that the future integration of AI into basic science is an inevitable trend. AI is an interdisciplinary field, involving mathematics, physics, computer science, and other areas. In the future, the Nobel Prize may also be awarded to achievements in such interdisciplinary fields," said Liu Yi’an.

Biologists need to seriously examine the significance of technologies like AI in their field and adapt accordingly, said Liu Yaowen, a biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The outcome of this Nobel Prize could mean an acceleration in the development of biology.

"This is only the beginning of the profound impact of AI,” said Li Feifei, co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute and the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab.

Editor: Kim Taylor