Nobel Prize season amid military conflict, famine and artificial intelligence

TPO – Military conflicts, refugee crises, famine and artificial intelligence are the most concerned issues when the Nobel Prize announcement season begins next week.

The announcement of the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on October 3, 2023. (Photo: AP)

This year's Nobel Prize week comes exactly one year after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel (October 7, 2023), ushering in a year of bloodshed and conflict across the Middle East.

The literary and scientific awards may be unrelated, but the Nobel Peace Prize is gaining attention amid a climate of growing international violence.

“I look at the world and see so much conflict, hostility and confrontation. I wonder if this is the year the Nobel Peace Prize should be withheld,” said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr Smith pointed to the escalating fighting in the Middle East, the conflict in Sudan and the threat of famine there, while the conflict in Ukraine has no end in sight. The institute’s research shows that global military spending is rising at its fastest pace since World War II.

“The prize may be going to some groups that are doing good work but are being marginalized. But the trend is in the wrong direction. Perhaps it would be worth drawing attention to that by holding back the peace prize this year,” Mr. Smith said.

Withholding the Nobel Peace Prize is not unprecedented. The prize has been suspended 19 times, including during the years of world war. The last time it was not awarded was in 1972.

However, Mr. Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said that holding back the 2023 peace prize would be a mistake, because awarding the prize this year would be a way to promote and recognize the importance of peace.

Civil society groups and international organizations working to reduce violence in the Middle East may be eligible for awards.

The list of nominees is kept secret, but the nominators have made their selections public. Academics at the Free University of Amsterdam said they nominated several organizations working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians, including EcoPeace, Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun.

Mr Urdal believes the prize committee may consider awarding the prize to Sudan Emergency Response Rooms, a group that has been working on an initiative to provide aid to the people of Sudan facing famine and affected by the country's devastating civil war.

This year's Nobel Prize season will officially begin on October 7, with the prizes in physiology or medicine, followed by the prizes in physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee on October 11 in Oslo. The other prizes will be announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The economics prize will be announced on October 14.

This year, new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), could be recognized in one or more categories.

AI opponents warn that the rise of autonomous weapons shows that this new technology could cause more suffering and disrupt human peace. However, AI has also created scientific breakthroughs that could be recognized in other categories.

Scientists from Google's AI lab Deepmind could be a contender for the Nobel Prize in chemistry, says David Pendlebury, head of research analytics at Clarivate's Institute for Scientific Information.

The company's artificial intelligence product AlphaFold can accurately predict the structure of proteins, which is widely used in a number of fields, including medicine, and could one day be used to develop breakthrough drugs.

Binh Giang

According to AP

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