How did a computer scientist such as Geoffrey Hinton manage to win a Nobel Prize in physics when computer science already has its own Nobel Prize equivalent in the Turing Awards?

(Mumbles of assent)

Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Whatever.

Federal judge approves $2.8B settlement, paving way for US colleges to pay athletes millions - ABC News

You can have your cake and eat it too

^† They rationalise their decision thusly:

^* Fibiger got the 1926 Medicine prize for the discovery of Spiroptera carcinoma (Don’t ask).

How would you feel if your girlfriend had dick pics on her phone?

"Good point, I'm sure we can swing it. And let's tack on Hopfield while we're about it."

… then anything is possible. There’s no rule that a Nobel Prize has to make sense.^*

My 11 million SEK, Dr Jo.

'Heads of State' Review: John Cena & Idris Elba in Amazon Buddy Comedy - The Hollywood Reporter

Whatever.

In awarding prizes, the Nobel Committees often seem only marginally more competent than MTG is at explaining meteorology. And if they can give a literature prize for lyrics like:

Fortunately, we are privy to the discussion that led up to this:

This ‘smoke’ ring was formed by one of the biggest creatures on Earth. Scientists say it has never been documented before - BBC Wildlife Magazine

"Hey guys, AI is pretty big so let's centre our prizes on it this year. We can get some attention, and it's all about advertising, at the end of the day, isn't it?"

In December 1973, when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, comedian Tom Lehrer dropped his mic and stamped on it—satire had just died.

A fly on the wall at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Why has no country adopted the SA80/L85 rifle?

[Older voice] "Mmm. What about Hinton, he's widely regarded? Nobody got fired for buying IBM"

[The basic structure of artificial neural networks] has close similarities with spin models in statistical physics applied to magnetism or alloy theory. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes research exploiting this connection to make breakthrough methodological advances in the field of ANN.

There you go.^†

What are some good sunscreens for a teen with oily skin?

"Naah, Linnainmaa is a Finn. Can't give it to a bloody Finnish mathematician. Let's go for drinks. Brännvin anyone?"

"Where can we shoehorn it in? Chemistry is easy 'cos AlphaFold; but what about physics? A bit more challenging, right?"

They then move on to selectively provide their own version of history. But hey, it’s OK. They wanted controversy, didn’t they? Whatever.

A Mesozoic myth: Dinosaurs didn’t rule the Earth like we think - Big Think

(Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016)

"Good idea, but how can we wangle something that says 'Physics'?"

"Didn't he do something with Boltzmann in it? That sounds physics-y. RBMs and stuff, eh?"

Is the timing of OpenAI’s deployment of Times-trained multimodal models coinciding with Microsoft’s boost in market capitalization in the past year just a coincidence?

[Younger voice] "But wait a minute, Ising-Lenz goes back to the 1920's. And didn't Hinton plagiarise rather a lot? He also didn't invent modern backprop, did he, that's Linnainmaa? And Amari preceded Hopfield, too. That's not a good look."

When he's standing, in front of you

Why wait any longer for the one you love?

When Chinese people see my pets, will they think of it as their food?