The IAIFI Symposium on the Impact of Generative AI in the Physical Sciences brought leading researchers in generative AI and physics together for plenary talks, panels, and discussion, to define the potential for this class of tools to impact physics research, and to understand what is needed for this potential to be realized. The organizers will be generating a whitepaper after the Symposium on the workshop topic, so themes from the talks and discussions may appear in the whitepaper. Credit will be given where appropriate.
- When: This event took place on March 14–15, 2024
- Where: MIT College of Computing (Building 45), 8th floor (51 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA)
Agenda Speakers Organizing Committee
About
The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) is enabling physics discoveries and advancing foundational AI through the development of novel AI approaches that incorporate first principles, best practices, and domain knowledge from fundamental physics.
This event was funded by MIT’s Office of the Provost.
Additional support from A3D3.
Agenda
Thursday, March 14, 2024
9:00 am–9:30 am ET
Breakfast and Introduction (coffee and pastries will be provided)
| Slides | Recording |
9:30–10:30 am ET
Foundation Models in Physics: Successes in Astrophysics
Anna Scaife, University of Manchester
| Slides | Recording |
10:30–11:00 am ET
Break (coffee and pastries will be provided)
11:00 am–12:00 pm ET
Physics-Motivated Approaches to Model Design: Deep Learning
Simon Batzner, Google DeepMind
| Slides not available | Recording not available |
12:00–1:30 pm ET
Lunch Break (working meeting for speakers and organizers)
1:30–2:30 pm ET
Foundation Models beyond Physics: Successes in Molecular Biology
Kevin Yang, Microsoft Research
| Slides | Recording |
2:30–3:00 pm ET
Break (coffee and snacks will be provided)
3:00–4:00 pm ET
Physics-Motivated Approaches to Model Design: Observations and Data Analysis
David Hogg, NYU/Flatiron
| Slides | Recording |
4:00–5:30 pm ET
Panel: Community Perspectives on what is needed for generative AI to fulfill its promise in physics
Dan Huttenlocher (MIT), Phil Harris (MIT), Jesse Thaler (MIT/IAIFI)
Friday, March 15, 2024
9:00 am–10:30 am ET
Panel: Potential impacts of generative AI in physics
Pavel Izmailov (OpenAI), Matt Schwartz (Harvard), David Hogg (NYU/Flatiron)
10:30–11:00 am ET
Break (coffee and pastries will be provided)
11:00 am–12:00 pm ET
Big vs. Small Generative Models
Song Han, MIT
| Slides | Recording |
12:00–1:30 pm ET
Lunch Break (working meeting for speakers and organizers)
1:30–2:30 pm ET
Physics-Motivated Approaches to Hardware Design
Thea Aarrestad, ETH Zurich
| Slides | Recording |
2:30–3:00 pm ET
Break (coffee and snacks will be provided)
3:00–4:00 pm ET
Physics-Motivated Approaches to Model Design: Natural Science of Artificial Intelligence
Hidenori Tanaka, Harvard
| Slides | Recording |
4:00–5:15 pm ET
Fireside Chat: Jared Kaplan, Anthropic (Virtual)
5:15–5:30 pm ET
Closing
Speakers
Panelists
Fireside Chat
Organizing Committee
- Phil Harris (MIT)
- Phiala Shanahan (MIT)
- Gaia Grosso (IAIFI Fellow)
- Siddharth Mishra-Sharma (IAIFI Fellow)
- Marisa LaFleur (IAIFI Project Manager)