IMO this award recognizes the effort and success of modeling the acquisition of knowledge, especially toward realizing such models in usable ways that will surely redefine life on this planet forever. Few Nobels have recognized work that is so culturally groundbreaking (and so disruptive). It'd be hard to see the Nobels as a significant measure of science/technology if they did NOT acknowledge the revolution begat by ML using DL. And with Hopfield at age 91 and Hinton 76, now is the right time to do so.