The Google AI unit’s CEO Demis Hassabis and scientist John Jumper were recognized for AI model AlphaFold2, released in 2020. They shared the award with University of Washington professor David Baker, who developed proteins unlike any that exist in nature. (The Logic)

Talking point: Wednesday’s Nobel is the second successive award for AI discoveries, after University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton and Princeton University professor John Hopfield won the physics prize. The Royal Swedish Academy said DeepMind’s breakthrough will allow scientists to better understand bodies, diseases and materials, while Baker’s could lead to new chemicals and drugs. DeepMind released AlphaFold’s source code and the predictions it had made about already-identified proteins in July 2022. The lab has more recently been building generative models for Google’s big AI push.