The Spanish princess honoured four scientists for their groundbreaking artificial intelligence research—the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in 2022.

The foundation that bestows the Princess of Asturias Awards recognized Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio for developing machine-based "deep learning," a method by which computers can begin to learn through the use of sophisticated algorithms autonomously.

The fourth prize recipient was Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, a prominent artificial intelligence startup. DeepMind is a Google subsidiary.

The AphaFold protein database, a joint project between DeepMind and the European Bioinformatics Institute, has accurately predicted the structures of over 350,000 human proteins.

The Princess of Asturias jury stated that the work "represents a significant advancement in techniques, including speech recognition, natural language processing, and the perception of objects, among others."

The jury stated, "The impact on the present and future advancement of civilization is tremendous."

The award of 50,000 euros ($53,600) is one of eight prizes awarded annually by the foundation in the arts, communication, science, and other fields. In October, the awards ceremony is in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.