Author: Aaron J. Snoswell, Research Fellow in AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”. Inspired by ideas from physics and biology, Hopfield and Hinton developed computer systems that can memorise and learn from patterns in data. Despite never directly collaborating, they built on each other’s work to develop the foundations of the current boom in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). What are neural networks? (And what do they have to do with physics?) Artificial neural networks are behind much of the AI technology we…

Read More

Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”. But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway? Discussed in 2023, but popularised more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of AI-generated data on the internet. The need for data Modern AI systems are built using machine learning. Programmers set up the underlying mathematical structure, but the actual “intelligence” comes from training the system to mimic patterns in data. But…

Read More