STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Wars, a refugee crisis, famine and artificial intelligence can all be recognized when the Nobel Prize announcements begin next week under a veil of violence.
The awards week coincides with the October 7 anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which kicked off a year of bloodshed and war in the Middle East.
The literature and science prizes could be immune. But the Peace Prize, which rewards efforts to end conflict, will be awarded in an atmosphere of increasing international violence – if it is awarded at all.
“I look at the world and see so much conflict, hostility and confrontation that 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.
In addition to events in the Middle East, Smith mentions the war in Sudan and the risk of famine there, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and his institute’s research showing that global military spending is rising at the fastest pace since World War II.
“It could go to some groups that are making heroic efforts but are marginalized,” Smith said. “But the trend is going in the wrong direction. Perhaps it would be good to draw attention to that by withholding the peace prize this year.”
Withholding the Nobel Prize is not new. It has been suspended nineteen times in the past, including during the world wars. The last time the prize was not awarded was in 1972.
However, Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, says pulling out in 2024 would be a mistake, saying the prize is “arguably more important as a way to promote and recognize important work for peace.”
Civic grassroots groups and international organizations with missions to alleviate violence in the Middle East could be recognized.
Nominees are kept secret for fifty years, but qualified nominators often make their choices public. Academics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam said they have nominated Middle East-based organizations EcoPeace, Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun for peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.
Urdal believes it is possible the committee could consider the Sudan Emergency Response Rooms, a group of grassroots initiatives that provide assistance to affected Sudanese facing famine and ravaged by the country’s brutal civil war.
The announcements start on Monday with the prize for physiology or medicine, followed on subsequent days by the prizes for physics, chemistry, literature and peace.
The Peace Prize announcement will be made on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, while all others will be announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The prize for economics will be announced the following week, on October 14.
New technology, possibly artificial intelligence, could be recognized in one or more of the categories.
Critics of AI warn that the rise of autonomous weapons shows that the new technology could mean additional peace-disturbing misery for many people. Yet AI has also enabled scientific breakthroughs that qualify for recognition in other categories.
David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, says scientists from Google Deepmind, the AI lab, could be among those considered for the chemistry prize.
The company’s artificial intelligence, AlphaFold, “accurately predicts the structure of proteins,” and is already widely used in several fields, including medicine, where it could one day be used to develop a breakthrough drug .
Pendlebury tops Clarivate’s list of scientists whose papers are among the most cited in the world, and whose work he believes is ripe for Nobel Prize recognition.
“AI will increasingly become part of the arsenal of tools that researchers use,” Pendlebury said. He said he would be very surprised if a discovery “firmly anchored in AI” did not win Nobel prizes in the next decade.