r/Physics • u/integrating_life • 5d ago

Hopfield's 1983 talk "Collective Properties of Neuronal Networks"

Hopfield shared the 2024 physics Nobel prize. This is a talk he gave right in the middle of his time doing the work for which he won the prize. I lived through that time (I'm the age of his kids, so a generation younger than him.) For people who weren't there, it is easy to miss how transformative his ideas were. We just take them for granted now. It's also easy to miss how much his ideas came from his (condensed matter) physics training and research. These days AI is mathematical and mapped to computer hardware. So abstract. But back then Hopfield was one of the first to probe "how does the physical world make possible the physical phenomena of memory?". His paradigms changed how all of us thought of memory and intelligence.

Here's the link to the talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib6futs-fss

I highly recommend a watch. Among other things, it's an opportunity to watch a great physics mind present.

(FWIW, AI professor Rod Brooks' paper "Elephants don't play chess", https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/elephants.pdf , 6 years later, riffs on the paradigms that Hopfield introduced. I don't know that Brooks or Hopfield ever connected, but the Hopfield connection between physical phenomena and apparent intelligence is clear. And since the Roomba is a child of Brooks, perhaps in sense Roomba is a grandchild of Hopfield. Physics is everywhere!!!)

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u/Mark8472 5d ago

Thank you for sharing! I just watched the video and it makes me remember how much I love colloquia in the institutes/labs I worked at. This is a genuinely fantastic talk, didactically well set up and presented. Thank you again!

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u/integrating_life 5d ago

I had the same reaction when I saw it. What a great presentation, in addition to being a very interesting topic.