In lieu of a banner year, a watershed moment

JAKE SALTZMAN, EDITOR JAKE.SALTZMAN@PHOTONICS.COM

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2023, the clock started ticking on what would become a seismic 24-hour period. For those of us in North America, it began when we woke up to the news that Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier had been announced as winners of the Nobel Prize in physics. The trio’s award, in recognition of their advancements in attosecond pulse generation, established consecutive years in which a photonics (or photonics-enabled) achievement was celebrated with the ultimate honor.

In the optical sciences community, the 2023 winners represented something more. Though the accomplishments of Agostini, Krausz, and L’Huillier made it six of the last 10 Nobel Prizes in physics to have a photonics connection, it also marked the first Nobel Prize in five years to be awarded to an individual or group whose seminal work was in laser physics. In Nobel Prize time, five years can feel more like 50.

The award of the Nobel Prize in chemistry on the morning of Oct. 4 intensified the focus that the previous day’s news had already placed on the optical sciences. Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov took the prize for the discovery and development of quantum dots. As far as innovations in chemistry go, few tie as tightly to photonics as quantum dots, given their utility in optical communications, displays, solar cells, and optical imaging.

Put simply, it was a good day for photonics. And after scientists at the National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition on Dec. 5, 2022 — a bona fide historical milestone that will live in the annals of more than any singular scientific discipline — the 24 hours bridging Oct. 3 and Oct. 4 last year sent a strong signal that 2023, too, was to be considered a banner year for photonics.

This year’s Nobel Prize in physics signals something else. Awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” there is no need to go back and check how many times AI has featured in the celebrated achievements of previous Nobel Laureates.

But could six of the next 10 Nobel Prizes in physics — or in chemistry, physiology, or economic sciences — recognize AI-related, or even AI-aided innovations?

That we might ask such a question indicates that we’ve reached a turning point.

More certain than the future of AI is that, in terms of impact and potential, we are due if not overdue to include foundational AI in any conversation about the present and future of the sciences. Questions about the ethics of AI in a context such as the awarding of the Nobel Prizes will endure. And many will balk at favoring accomplishments routed in computational methods compared with more traditional achievements. But this topic is not one to ignore any longer.

For that, you can thank the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics winners. You can also thank society. Unlike the Royal Swedish Academy, its stance on AI is hardly just now beginning to take shape.

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