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The American Physical Society Global Physics Summit is the world\u2019s largest meeting of physicists<\/p>\n
American Physical Society<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I am sitting in a lecture theatre, and in front of me is a sight that I am still getting used to. I am at the American Physical Society Global Physics Summit<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest annual meeting of physicists, with 14,000 researchers attending in Denver, Colorado, this year. We have all come to listen to world-leading scientists talk about their work \u2013 and yet, many people are turning to artificial intelligence to help explain what we are actually hearing.<\/p>\n As the talks go on, I keep catching glimpses of laptop screens displaying AI chatbots, which are being asked to put concepts into easier-to-understand terms. \u201cWhat are the benefits of transmon qubits?\u201d \u201cExplain spintronics to me.\u201d \u201cWhat is a two-level system?\u201d The AIs are promptly providing the information, using emojis as bullet points.<\/p>\n While AI chatbots have demonstrated their usefulness in lecture halls, whether they can help with doing actual physics research is one of the hottest topics at the conference, debated in every forum, from the talks themselves to in-between sessions and alumni receptions.<\/p>\n In one presentation<\/a>, Matthew Schwartz<\/a> at Harvard University said that Anthropic\u2019s Claude chatbot can solve advanced physics problems as effectively as a student in the early stages of a doctoral degree programme. In January, Schwartz co-authored a study<\/a> in quantum field theory by working with Claude for about two weeks. Strikingly, he estimated that completing the same research in collaboration with a student would have taken roughly two years.<\/p>\n He believes that AI puts theoretical physics \u201con the chopping block\u201d. Schwartz said he no longer mentors students who don\u2019t want to collaborate with AI tools and believes that all the problems that currently plague fundamental physics, such as combining quantum theory with Albert Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity, will be solved in about five years thanks to AI. Working with Claude made him feel like Einstein himself \u2013 and like everyone could become an Einstein equivalent, he said. His talk was called \u201c10,000 Einsteins\u201d.<\/p>\n Schwartz represents an extreme end of the spectrum. Savannah Thais<\/a> at City University of New York made the case in her presentation that it is too soon to tell how transformative the technology will be for physics. She pointed to the fact that AI is good at producing plausible-sounding science, but there is no fool-proof method for discerning whether it is correct. Many of the steps are typically hidden from researchers and underlying assumptions made in particle physics, for example, can lead to less accurate results.<\/p>\n