The #NobelPrize in Physics 2024 for Hopfield & Hinton turns out to be a Nobel Prize for plagiarism. They republished methodologies developed in #Ukraine and #Japan by Ivakhnenko and Amari in the 1960s & 1970s, as well as other techniques, without citing the original inventors.
Tangent
I won't say anything about Physics Nobel Prizes but this reminded me of two anecdotes:
People here love Cryptography. One of the most groundbreaking and fundamental ideas in cryptography was when Shannon "invented" the One-Time-Pad in the 40s.
Unfortunately there already was a guy called Vigenère in the 1500s who discovered the same thing. The story is not quite as interesting as the next anecdote because Shannon was aware of Vigenère and bitwise xor is only kind of the same thing as letter permutations but nonetheless a rediscovery of a thing that already existed.
Unfortunately there already was a guy called Vigenère in the 1500s who discovered the same thing. The story is not quite as interesting as the next anecdote because Shannon was aware of Vigenère and bitwise xor is only kind of the same thing as letter permutations but nonetheless a rediscovery of a thing that already existed.
| Shannon | Vigenère |
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Second anecdote is the Fast Fourier Transform. You might know what FFT is because it was groundbreaking in the 60s. It revolutionized everything. From wireless communication to earthquake detection to weather to chemistry - the FFT algorithm is EVERYWHERE.... Except it wasn't discovered in the 60s. Our old friend Mr Gauß discvoered/invented it in 1805 but it was in Latin
| J. W. Cooley and John Tukey | Gauss |
|---|---|
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Conclusion
Anyway, I won't say anything about whether Schmidhuber discovered blatant plagiarism in this years NobelPrize in Physics or if mankind is just doomed to rediscover and rediscover and rediscover stuff from the 60s but let me say this:
My personal favorite way out of this dilemma is building AGI. Let us build an artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence. That can discover things and write papers such that humans spend their time reproducing results and verifying is instead. An all knowing computer that will tell us everything about a subject such that the smartest people on earth (like Nobel Prize winning physicist) don't waste decades of their lives with stuff that was already discovered - these things should be 1 Google search or AI prompt away, not decades.
Anyway, here are some pics from Neon Genesis Evangelion so you guys can feel as inspired as I am
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