Geoffrey Hinton from University of Toronto and John Hopfield from Princeton University both received this year's Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their research in the field of artificial intelligence. Specifically, the duo was recognized for their foundational work in neural networks, which laid the groundwork for today's large language models and generative AI.

Hinton is widely recognized as the godfather of artificial intelligence, and he made headlines last year when he quit working for Google so he could more freely speak against the risks of AI -- a technology he played a significant role in creating.

Hinton was instrumental in developing a technique in the '80s called backpropagation, which enables algorithms to learn. Here's how the concept works.

If you were teaching a robot to distinguish between different animals, its learning process consists of three major steps:

So after many repetitions, where tens of thousands of images may be reviewed, the robot gets better and better at finding the correct animals -- which is basically how computers "learn."

John Hopfield's contribution was regarding the concept of "associative memory" where he developed a type of computer memory that works a lot like the human brain. His associative memory model is similar to a huge connect-the-dot picture, where every dot stands for some information.

What Hopfield did, was to get computers memorizing and recalling information closer to the way human brains do it. As a result, he enabled the software to be more pattern-recognizing and piece-filling-in algorithms.

Both Hopfield's and Hinton's research paved the way for AI as we know it today.

The annual honor comes with a cash award of $1 million from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The winners within each category -- economics, physics, peace, literature, medicine and chemistry -- are all invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, to commemorate the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

Aside from establishing the award, Nobel is best known for inventing dynamite.