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seoul, south korea — South Koreans flocked to bookstores Friday and crashed websites in a frenzy to snap up copies of the work of novelist Han Kang in her home country, after her unexpected win of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
However, the author herself was keeping out of the limelight.
The country’s largest bookstore chain, Kyobo Book Centre, said sales of her books had rocketed on Friday, with stocks almost immediately selling out and set to be in short supply for the near future.
“This is the first time a Korean has received a Nobel Prize in Literature, so I was amazed,” said Yoon Ki-heon, a 32-year-old visitor at a bookstore in central Seoul.
“South Korea had a poor achievement in winning Nobel Prizes, so I was surprised by news that (a writer of) non-English books, which were written in Korean, won such a big prize.”
Soon after Thursday’s announcement, some bookstore websites could not be accessed due to heavy traffic. Out of the current 10 bestsellers at Kyobo, nine were Han’s books on Friday morning, according to its website.
Han’s father, well-regarded author Han Seung-won, said the translation of her novel The Vegetarian, her major international breakthrough, had led to her winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 and now the Nobel prize.
“My daughter’s writing is very delicate, beautiful and sad,” Han Seung-won said.
“So, how you translate that sad sentence into a foreign language will determine whether you win … It seems the translator was the right person to translate the unique flavor of Korean language.”
Han’s other books address painful chapters of South Korean history, including Human Acts which examines the 1980 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the South Korean military in the city of Gwangju.
Another novel, We Do Not Part, looks at the fallout of the 1948-54 massacre on Jeju island, when an estimated 10% of the island’s population were killed in an anti-communist purge.
“I really hope souls of the victims and survivors could be healed from pain and trauma through her book,” said Kim Chang-beom, head of an association for the bereaved families of the Jeju massacre.
Park Gang-bae, a director at a foundation that honors the victims and supports the bereaved families and survivors of the Gwangju massacre, said he was “jubilant and moved ” by her win.
“The protagonists in her book (Human Acts) are people we meet and live with every day, on every corner here, so this is deeply moving,” Park said.
Han’s father told reporters on Friday that she may continue to shun the limelight after giving no separate comments or interviews and eschewing media scrutiny since Thursday’s win.
“She said given the fierce Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine wars and people dying every day, how could she celebrate and hold a joyous press conference?” her father said.
Han Kang received the news of her win about 10 to 15 minutes before the announcement, her father said, and was so surprised that she thought it might be a scam at one point.
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WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.
But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.
Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.
Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.
Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm
Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.
It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.
Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.
“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”
The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.
“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”
Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.
“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”
The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.
An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”
Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration
Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.
While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.
“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”
After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.
She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.
“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.
Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.
The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.
“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.
Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services
Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.
Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.
Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.
Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.
“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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Taipei, Taiwan — Organizers of Taiwan’s premier film festival report a huge increase this year in entries from China, despite a ban imposed by Beijing six years ago on participation in the festival by Chinese filmmakers and actors.
As many as 100 Chinese entries had been submitted for Golden Horse Awards in recent years, in defiance of the ban and without apparent consequences. But this year organizers say the number of movies and documentaries submitted from China shot up to 276.
More than a dozen of the Chinese films are potential finalists, some in multiple categories. The winners will be announced on November 23.
Industry analysts and directors say many of the Chinese filmmakers may have turned to the Golden Horse Awards to earn exposure for their movies, fearing they would be banned at home. Others point to the festival’s reputation for hosting a diversity of films.
According to a list of finalists released on October 2, Chinese director Lou Ye’s pseudo-documentary, An Unfinished Film, and Geng Jun’s black-and-white gay film Bel Ami were shortlisted for multiple awards.
Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society in Taipei, said both movies are likely to be banned in China.
He said that Lou, a regular participant in the Golden Horse Awards, has never bowed to the Chinese system and that his An Unfinished Film deviates from Beijing’s favored narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic. Geng’s Bel Ami, Weng added, challenges the values of the Chinese Communist Party amid a heavy-handed crackdown on the LGBTQ community.
Among this year’s entrants is Zheng Yu, a 27-year-old independent director from Inner Mongolia who specializes in expressing thoughts and emotions through images and who has been involved in film and television production for eight years.
His entry, Her Dream in the Living Room is a short film that records how life for his family was changed by an elder’s chronic disease. Although he was not shortlisted in the end, he told VOA that he still dreams of standing on the stage of the Golden Horse Awards one day.
Zheng said there are three golden awards in the Chinese film industry: the Taiwan Golden Horse, the Hong Kong Golden Statue and the China Golden Rooster Awards.
Among the three, “The Golden Horse Awards are more welcoming to varieties of films, and it is also more supportive of young directors, so this is why I wanted to apply for the Golden Horse Awards,” he said.
In addition to the film entries from China, this year’s festival includes 277 entries from Taiwan, 72 from Hong Kong, 17 from Macau, 21 from Malaysia, 17 from Singapore and 67 from other countries.
Ng Kwok Kwan, an associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Golden Horse Awards are the oldest Chinese film awards on either side of the Taiwan Strait.
Although entries from China, Hong Kong and Macao have been discouraged by politics, the Golden Horse Awards are still seen as major awards in the Chinese film industry, and being nominated for a festival award will greatly enhance a film’s visibility, he said.
Ng added that the festival has become the best channel for Chinese-speaking audiences to access excellent works, and it is also the ideal outlet for some non-mainstream Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers.
He said Hong Kong-made films received a total of 18 nominations at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and finally won four awards: Best New Director, Best New Actor, Best Feature Short Film and Best Animated Short Film.
“In recent years, some of the Hong Kong films nominated have been very good. They belong to a relatively niche and non-mainstream, and [the festival] has a special [interest] in the themes of non-mainstream, social issues, and experimental films, and I think it really has a certain contribution [to Hong Kong films],” he said.
Seventy-two Hong Kong films participated in this year’s Golden Horse Awards. From Now On, which explores the situation of older lesbians, was shortlisted for the Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actress awards.
Among the five shortlisted films for Best Short Film, three are Hong Kong films, including Colour Ideology Sampling.mov, Something About Us and Letters from the Imprisoned: Chow Hang Tung.
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The power of simple prayer to heal illness is not clear, according to scientists, and is difficult to study. Whatever your faith, when you’re sick, you should seek treatment from a doctor. But in Nigeria, some people choose spiritual healers and miracle cures over orthodox medicine and hospitals. That creates some dangerous situations. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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UNITED NATIONS — More than 370 million girls and women alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, the United Nations children’s agency said Wednesday.
The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, UNICEF reported, in what it called the first global survey of the problem.
The report said that while girls and women were worst affected, 240 million to 310 million boys and men, or around 1 in 11, have experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood.
“The scale of this human rights violation is overwhelming, and it’s been hard to fully grasp because of stigma, challenges in measurement, and limited investment in data collection,” UNICEF said in releasing the report.
It comes ahead of an inaugural Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in Colombia next month.
UNICEF said its findings highlight the urgent need for intensified global action, including by strengthening laws and helping children recognize and report sexual violence.
UNICEF said sexual violence cuts across geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries, but sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims, with 79 million girls and women, or 22% affected. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia follow with 75 million, or 8%.
In its data for women and girls, UNICEF estimated 73 million, or 9%, were affected in Central and Southern Asia; 68 million, or 14%, in Europe and Northern America; 45 million, or 18%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 29 million, or 15%, in Northern Africa and Western Asia.
Oceania, with 6 million, had the highest number affected by percentage, at 34%.
Risks were higher, rising to 1 in 4, in “fragile settings,” including those with weak institutions, U.N. peacekeeping forces, or large numbers of refugees, the report found.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell called sexual violence against children “a stain on our moral conscience.”
“It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe.”
UNICEF said most childhood sexual violence occurs during adolescence, especially between ages 14 and 17, and those who suffer it face higher risks of sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and mental health issues.
“(T)he impact is further compounded when children delay disclosing their experiences … or keep the abuse secret altogether,” UNICEF said.
It said increased investment in data collection was needed to capture the full scale the problem, given persistent data gaps, particularly on boys’ experiences.
UNICEF said it based its estimates of girls’ and women’s experiences on nationally representative surveys conducted between 2010 and 2022 in 120 countries and areas. It said estimates for boys and men were derived from a broader range of data sources and applied some indirect methods.
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NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare, bright comet.
The space rock is slinging toward Earth from the outer reaches of the solar system and will make its closest pass Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, clear skies permitting.
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be bright enough to see with the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will give a better view.
“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.
What is a comet?
Comets are frozen leftovers from the solar system’s formation billions of years ago. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, releasing their characteristic streaming tails.
In 2023, a green comet that last visited Earth 50,000 years ago zoomed by the planet again. Other notable flybys included Neowise in 2020, and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.
Where did comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
The comet, also designated C/2023 A3, was discovered last year and is named for the observatories in China and South Africa that spied it.
It came from what’s known as the Oort Cloud well beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach about 71 million kilometers of Earth, it won’t return for another 80,000 years — assuming it survives the trip.
Several comets are discovered every year, but many burn up near the sun or linger too far away to be visible without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a lead researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover the comet.
How to view the comet
Those hoping to spot comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should venture outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.
The comet should be visible from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
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As representatives of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity prepare to meet in Cali, Colombia, this month, residents of some Colombian islands in the Caribbean are calling for action because rising seas are threatening their homes, families, and way of life. Austin Landis traveled to Santa Cruz del Islote to hear their story. Camera: Jorge Calle.
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LONDON — That long-held Wimbledon tradition of line judges dressed in elegant uniforms is no more.
The All England Club announced Wednesday that artificial intelligence will be used to make the “out” and “fault” calls at the championships from 2025.
Wimbledon organizers said the decision to adopt live electronic line calling was made following extensive testing at the 2024 tournament and “builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology that has been in place for many years.”
“We consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating,” said Sally Bolton, chief executive of the All England Club. “For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour.”
Bolton said Wimbledon had a responsibility to “balance tradition and innovation.”
“Line umpires have played a central role in our officiating setup at the championships for many decades,” she said, “and we recognize their valuable contribution and thank them for their commitment and service.”
Line-calling technology has long been used at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments to call whether serves are in or out.
The All England Club also said Wednesday that the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals will be scheduled to take place at the later time of 4 p.m. local time on the second Saturday and Sunday, respectively — and after doubles finals on those days.
Bolton said the moves have been made to ensure the day of the finals “builds towards the crescendo of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals, with our champions being crowned in front of the largest possible worldwide audience.”
STOCKHOLM — Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said on Wednesday, for their work on the structure of proteins.
The prize, widely regarded as among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth $1.1 million.
“One of the discoveries being recognized 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,” the academy said in a statement.
Half the prize was awarded to Baker “for computational protein design” while the other half was shared by Hassabis and Jumper “for protein structure prediction,” the academy said.
The third award to be handed out every year, the chemistry prize follows those for medicine and physics announced earlier this week.
The Nobel prizes were established in the will of dynamite inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel and are awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
First handed out in 1901, 15 years after Nobel’s death, it is awarded for achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Recipients in each category share the prize sum that has been adjusted over the years.
The economics prize is a later addition funded by the Swedish central bank.
Chemistry, close to Alfred Nobel’s heart and the discipline most applicable to his own work as an inventor, may not always be the most headline-grabbing of the prizes, but past recipients include scientific greats such as radioactivity pioneers Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie.
Last year’s chemistry award went to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov for their discovery of tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots, widely used today to create colors in flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that help surgeons see blood vessels in tumors.
Alongside the cash prize, the winners will be presented a medal by the Swedish king on Dec. 10, followed by a lavish banquet in Stockholm city hall.
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Abuja, Nigeria — Cholera is surging in Nigeria, health officials said this week, with the number of cases and deaths increasing by more than 200% this year.
The Nigerian Center for Disease Control said in this week’s epidemiological report that the country has recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera this year — a 220% increase compared with the same point in 2023.
The report said fatalities over the same periods have increased from 106 to 359 — a rise of 239%.
The state of Lagos accounted for 43% of the nation’s cases, while Kano, Katsina, Jigawa and Borno also recorded significant numbers.
Last month, the worst flooding in 30 years ravaged conflict-ridden Borno state, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation there. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and moved to overcrowded camps.
“We’re now facing a significant public health challenge that demands urgent attention and action,” Borno Health Commissioner Baba Mallam Gana said. “This outbreak is concerning, especially in the aftermath of a flooding incident.
“The floods have created ideal conditions for the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera by contaminating water sources and disrupting sanitation systems,” he said.
Cholera is a bacterial disease, usually spread by contaminated food or water. It causes severe diarrhea and dehydration.
The Nigerian CDC launched a national emergency response along with state authorities to bring numbers down, but the number of cases is surging, Gana said.
“We must now act swiftly to prevent further spread of this disease,” he said.
As part of the flood intervention responses, Gana said, the Borno public health emergency center was converted into a control center to coordinate surveillance, risk communication and community engagement, as well as essential health services, infection prevention, water sanitation and hygiene.
Nigeria’s Health Ministry is sending hundreds of thousands of doses of cholera vaccine to the affected areas. Borno alone received 300,000 doses, and state authorities say the vaccine has been distributed to camps for those displaced by the floods.
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NEW YORK/WASHINGTON — TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people.
The lawsuits, filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok’s legal fight with U.S. regulators and seek new financial penalties against the company.
Washington is located in the District of Columbia.
The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness.
“TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.”
TikTok seeks to maximize the amount of time users spend on the app in order to target them with ads, the states said.
“Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
TikTok said on Tuesday that it strongly disagreed with the claims, “many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” and that it was disappointed the states chose to sue “rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
TikTok provides safety features that include default screentime limits and privacy defaults for minors under 16, the company said.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged that TikTok operates an unlicensed money transmission business through its livestreaming and virtual currency features.
“TikTok’s platform is dangerous by design. It’s an intentionally addictive product that is designed to get young people addicted to their screens,” Schwalb said in an interview.
Washington’s lawsuit accused TikTok of facilitating sexual exploitation of underage users, saying TikTok’s livestreaming and virtual currency “operate like a virtual strip club with no age restrictions.”
Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington state also sued on Tuesday.
In March 2022, eight states, including California and Massachusetts, said they launched a nationwide probe of TikTok impacts on young people.
The U.S. Justice Department sued TikTok in August for allegedly failing to protect children’s privacy on the app. Other states, including Utah and Texas, previously sued TikTok for failing to protect children from harm. TikTok on Monday rejected the allegations in a court filing.
TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is battling a U.S. law that could ban the app in the United States.
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STOCKHOLM — Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats to humanity, one of the winners said.
Hinton, who is known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto. Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.
“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Nobel committee said in a press release.
Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”
She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”
Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a “huge influence” on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.
“It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he said in the open call with reporters and the officials from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects,” Hinton said. “But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”
The Nobel committee that honored the science behind machine learning and AI also mentioned fears about its possible flipside. Moon said that while it has “enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind.”
Hinton shares those concerns. He quit a role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.
On Tuesday, he said he was shocked at the honor.
“I’m flabbergasted. I had, no idea this would happen,” he said when reached by the Nobel committee on the phone.
There was no immediate reaction from Hopfield.
Hinton, now 76, in the 1980s helped develop a technique known as backpropagation that has been instrumental in training machines how to “learn.”
His team at the University of Toronto later wowed peers by using a neural network to win the prestigious ImageNet computer vision competition in 2012. That win spawned a flurry of copycats, giving birth to the rise of modern AI.
Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the Nobel committee said.
Hinton used Hopfield’s network as the foundation for a new network that uses a different method, known as the Boltzmann machine, that the committee said can learn to recognize characteristic elements in a given type of data.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it. If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.
The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry physics prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
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While online dating apps are as popular as ever, some singles prefer meeting in person. Karina Bafradzhian has a look at some services that offer face-to-face meetups for people who are looking for friends as often as dates. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
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