“Could an AI Win a Nobel Prize?” Quantum Researchers Ask

Could an AI win a Nobel prize? That’s the provocative question a team of scientists are pondering after putting GPU-powered deep learning to work to accelerate their science, with impressive results. “AI is beating conventional methods,” Paul Wigley, a doctoral student at the Autralian National University told host Michael Copeland on this week’s edition of our AI Podcast. “The more we apply it to physics, the more it will advance,” Wigley said. Curious about the scope of deep learning in physics-related experimental applications, Wigley was a member of a team that saw an opportunity to use AI to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate — a state of matter in which atoms are cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero and a starting point for other measurements.