2024年诺贝尔化学奖授予三位科学家，其中两位来自谷歌DeepMind。Demis Hassabis和John Jumper因创建AlphaFold2 AI模型计算人类蛋白质结构获奖，David Baker因计算蛋白质设计获奖。该成果使原本需数年的工作现在只需几分钟，且为相关研究带来诸多可能，同时人工智能技术在其中发挥重要作用，但这也引发了一些争议。

🎯Demis Hassabis和John Jumper是谷歌DeepMind的重要人物，他们创建的AlphaFold2 AI模型能够计算人类蛋白质的结构，借助该模型可预测几乎所有已被识别的2亿种蛋白质的结构。

💻David Baker因计算蛋白质设计获奖，他在2003年成功设计出一种与众不同的新蛋白质，并在过去二十年中为制药、疫苗、纳米材料和微型传感器开发了新蛋白质。

🌟今年的诺贝尔化学奖成果意义重大，原本需花费数年的工作现在只需几分钟，且该成果为帮助研究人员理解抗生素耐药性和开发塑料降解酶等提供了可能，但物理学奖授予为AI奠定基础的科学家引发了一些争议。

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists today — two of which are significant figures at Google DeepMind — for their work around proteins, which the Nobel Prize committee describes as the “chemical tools of life.”

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and senior DeepMind research scientist John Jumper received the award for creating the open-source AlphaFold2 AI model to calculate the structure of human proteins. “With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified,” the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its announcement.

David Baker, who shares the prize with Hassabis and Jumper, was awarded for “computational protein design.” The Nobel Committee noted that Baker had successfully designed a new protein in 2003 that was “unlike any other,” and has since developed new proteins for pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors over the last two decades.

“One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences,” said Nobel Chemistry Committee chair Heiner Linke. “Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities.”

The scientific applications for AlphaFold2 include helping researchers to understand antibiotic resistance and develop plastic degrading enzymes, according to the Nobel Committee. “Work that once took years now takes just a few minutes thanks to this year’s chemistry laureates,” the Nobel committee said on X.

The development of artificial intelligence technology has played a notable role in this year’s lineup, with the Nobel Prize for Physics being awarded yesterday to two scientists credited for building the “foundation” for AI. That announcement has already attracted criticism from some physicists who feel the award was miscategorized — a sentiment echoed by Geoffrey Hinton, one of the Physics awardees who is known as a “Godfather of AI.”

“If there was a Nobel Prize for computer science, our work would clearly be more appropriate for that,” Hinton said in a post-award interview with The New York Times. “But there isn’t one.” When commended for his comment by the Times, Hinton added that it was “also a hint.”