The award this week of Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics to a small number of artificial intelligence pioneers affiliated with Google has stirred debate over the company's research dominance and how breakthroughs in computer science ought to be recognised.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists today — two of which are significant figures at Google DeepMind — for their work around proteins, which the Nobel Prize committee describes as the “chemical tools of life.”

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