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The 2024 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry underscore the crucial role of neural networks in advancing science. John Hopfield’s foundational work is deeply rooted in statistical physics, a century of research that has led to the theory of complex systems and self-organizing associative memory systems. Geoffrey Hinton, a cognitive scientist, sought to learn how to represent information in neural networks, contributing to the development of backpropagation algorithms (1986) and advances in deep learning (2015). This research has led to enormous advances in artificial intelligence, exemplified by AlphaGo’s triumph over the world Go champions in 2017. DeepMind, founded by neuroscientist and computer scientist Demis Hassabis, also created AlphaFold and AlphaProteo to predict and design protein structures, transforming the sciences of life. And that’s just the beginning! Can large neural networks give rise to consciousness? Włodzisław Duch is a professor of physical sciences who specializes in issues related to neural networks and artificial intelligence. His interests also include cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and neurobiology. He works at the Department of Applied Computer Science at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and heads the Neurocognitive Laboratory located at the university. Author of popular science books on neural networks, the brain, and artificial intelligence, a series of lectures on YouTube, and a blog https://wduch.wordpress.com Support the Copernicus channel: / @copernicuscenter https://patronite.pl/copernicus