AI researchers have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for their work on proteins.
Sir Demis Hassabis, who is the chief executive and and co-founder of London-based artificial intelligence start-up Google DeepMind, received the honour alongside John Jumper, a senior research scientist at the company, and David Baker, of the University of Washington.
The win for the DeepMind researchers represents the second Nobel Prize in a row to be awarded for AI work. The day before, machine learning researchers were given the physics prize for their work on early systems that led to today’s artificial intelligence.
In 2020, Sir Demis and Dr Jumper presented an AI model called AlphaFold2.
With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified.
Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries.
Sir Demis Hassabis was born in London in 1976 and received his PhD in from University College London.