The announcement of the artificial intelligence researchers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton as this year’s Nobel laureates in physics spurred celebration and consternation over the status of AI in science and society. In Japan, however, another feeling dominates: frustration. “Japanese researchers should also have won,” an editorial in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper proclaimed. Congratulating Hopfield and Hinton, the Japanese Neural Network Society added pointedly: “We must not forget the role pl...