John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats for humanity.

Hinton, 76, helped develop a technique in the 1980s known as backpropagation instrumental in training machines how to 'learn' by fine-tuning errors until they disappear.

Instead of giving the physics prize to pioneers in physics, the academy on Tuesday gave the award to Princeton professor John Hopfield and University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton for their work on AI and machine learning.

Two pioneers of artificial intelligence have won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.