John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.

John Hopfield dreamed up the modern neural network while at Caltech. Geoffrey Hinton built on it, creating an AI firm that Google bought for $44 million.

At least half of Wednesday's prize was awarded to a tool that has revolutionized the lives of biochemists, designed by Demis Hassabis of the UK and John Jumper of the US.