ChatGPT與諾貝爾物理學獎

2024/10/10

相較於CEO，我更欣賞那些知識貢獻者，尤其是當前「機器學習」背後的沈默天才——Ilya Sutskever。

當全球數十億人如虎頭蜂般湧向ChatGPT，渴望透過這項生成式AI嚐試最新「科技」成果時，是否也該理解其背後的「人文」故事？

談到ChatGPT的誕生，我最為敬佩的是Ilya Sutskever。他是這個聊天機器人背後的頭腦——沈默的天才，也是OpenAI的共同創辦人及首席科學家之一。

Sutskever就讀多倫多大學電腦科學系時，他 一心想加入 Geoffrey Hinton 教授的深度學習實驗室。有一天，他到Hinton教授辦公室敲了門，詢問是否能夠加入實驗室。Hinton 覺得 Sutskever 是個聰穎的學生，於是給了他兩篇研究論文閱讀。

一週後，Sutskever 回來對教授說他沒看懂。教授問他「為什麼不懂？」，他解釋道： 「你訓練一個神經網絡來解決一個問題，但如果你想解決另一個問題，就得再訓練一個新的神經網絡來解決這個新的問題。應該有一個神經網絡能夠學習所有這些問題。」

就是這個理念，促成了今日的ChatGPT，讓人工智慧能夠解決多樣化的問題。

而Geoffrey Hinton 教授就是今年諾貝爾物理學獎得主之一（於台灣時間10月8日下午5時45分許公佈），與普林斯頓大學的 John J. Hopfield 共同獲得殊榮。他們的發現與創新，讓世人得以透過人工神經網絡推動機器學習的發展。

English Version

Compared to CEOs, I have greater admiration for those who contribute knowledge, especially the silent genius behind machine learning—Ilya Sutskever.

As billions of people around the world rush to experience ChatGPT, eager to explore the latest technological advancements through this generative AI, shouldn’t they also appreciate the “human story” behind it?

Regarding the creation of ChatGPT, I have the utmost appreciation for Ilya Sutskever. He is the mind behind this chatbot—a silent genius and one of the co-founders as well as the Chief Scientist at OpenAI.

As a computer science student at the University of Toronto, Sutskever aspired to join Professor Geoffrey Hinton’s deep learning lab. One day, he knocked on Professor Hinton’s office door and asked if he could join the lab. Hinton found Sutskever to be a bright student and gave him two research papers to read.

A week later, Sutskever returned to the professor and said he didn’t understand them. When the professor asked, “Why not?” he explained: “You train a neural network to solve a problem, and then, if you want to solve a different problem, you have to train a new neural network to solve that problem. There should be a neural network that can learn from all these problems.”

It was this idea that led to today’s ChatGPT, enabling AI to tackle a diverse range of problems.

And Professor Geoffrey Hinton is one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics (announced around 5:45 PM Taiwan time on October 8). He shares the honor with John J. Hopfield of Princeton University. Their discoveries and innovations have enabled the advancement of machine learning through artificial neural networks.