I think they mean improve our understanding of physics with new theoretical results or paradigms. Like if it’s 1899, would Astra develop General and Special relativity on its own?
This is as good a time as any to note that we might be closing in on a new conceptual revolution in our own time as it relates to holography and an information centric approach to spacetime. Obviously It's the furthest possible thing from a guarantee, but it has much of the enthusiasm and motivation that string theory had previously enjoyed in prior decades.
So it could be a natural experiment for whether AI can contribute to novel physics. Specifically, there's a big question about weather. Something like our informational understanding of black holes where information inside it is equivalent to information on its boundary (which I'm sure I'm not saying correctly), might be generalized to regular space-time. More people should be freaking out with excitement about this and perhaps it's something to which AI can contribute.
Honestly I don't think I have single great article, though some Quanta ones are ok, and the Wikipedia article is okay.
The best thing I can recommend is what I did, which is ask Claude about the significance of (1) quantum computing error correction, and (2) error correction in black hole holography and research convergence between the two.
There was symbolic AI programs in the 1980’s that “discovered” Kepler’s laws and the resulting solar system model from just tycho brache’s astronomical observations. That was the the very first “new physics” ever.
Do you mean after? People do this!! But I think it’s a bit different. It won’t be apples to apples because the data volume I think is just so much different. Maybe there are good experiments for something like this.
AI could discover candidate novel physics without autonomously operating new physical experiments, and humans or instruments can later independently validate the result. This is analogous to how Einstein developed theories whose predictions were confirmed by experiments and observations only years or decades later.
Do we have any examples of an current day AI system introducing a novel concept or perspective. We've got plenty of counterexamples discovered and some theorems proven, but afaik nothing analogous to a new definition.
It could be a good theoretical physicist. Actually it could be a good experimental physicist as well since senior experimental physicists use grad students for the manual labor.
For it to be like a human it wouldn't just need to solve existing phsyics problems, it would need to push the field forward and introduce new paradigms.
My comment wasn't very long, yet you somehow still ignored the main part, "and introduce new paradigms". The point is whether it can do everything humans can, entirely new theoretical frameworks and ideas, such as string theory or dark matter, are not coming out of AI at the moment.
I think they mean improve our understanding of physics with new theoretical results or paradigms. Like if it’s 1899, would Astra develop General and Special relativity on its own?
This is as good a time as any to note that we might be closing in on a new conceptual revolution in our own time as it relates to holography and an information centric approach to spacetime. Obviously It's the furthest possible thing from a guarantee, but it has much of the enthusiasm and motivation that string theory had previously enjoyed in prior decades.
So it could be a natural experiment for whether AI can contribute to novel physics. Specifically, there's a big question about weather. Something like our informational understanding of black holes where information inside it is equivalent to information on its boundary (which I'm sure I'm not saying correctly), might be generalized to regular space-time. More people should be freaking out with excitement about this and perhaps it's something to which AI can contribute.
Do you have anywhere you recommend where I can read more on this?
Honestly I don't think I have single great article, though some Quanta ones are ok, and the Wikipedia article is okay.
The best thing I can recommend is what I did, which is ask Claude about the significance of (1) quantum computing error correction, and (2) error correction in black hole holography and research convergence between the two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-space-and-time-could-be-a...
Edit: this whole article, despite it's boring title and hook, is maybe the best discussion of holography as a recent and active research frontier.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/if-the-universe-is-a-hologram...
There was symbolic AI programs in the 1980’s that “discovered” Kepler’s laws and the resulting solar system model from just tycho brache’s astronomical observations. That was the the very first “new physics” ever.
i wonder if we could train a modal, and omit all data prior to 1899, and see what happens?
Do you mean after? People do this!! But I think it’s a bit different. It won’t be apples to apples because the data volume I think is just so much different. Maybe there are good experiments for something like this.
as always, as good as its prompt...
I assume solving one of the major open problems of physics?
Would this be possible without it being able to run novel real-world physics experiments autonomously?
(Note: I am not suggesting we let it do this. Please don't, in fact)
AI could discover candidate novel physics without autonomously operating new physical experiments, and humans or instruments can later independently validate the result. This is analogous to how Einstein developed theories whose predictions were confirmed by experiments and observations only years or decades later.
Do we have any examples of an current day AI system introducing a novel concept or perspective. We've got plenty of counterexamples discovered and some theorems proven, but afaik nothing analogous to a new definition.
Pharmaceuticals already are…
It could be a good theoretical physicist. Actually it could be a good experimental physicist as well since senior experimental physicists use grad students for the manual labor.
Why not?
That's how we get AM.
Mornings? Long-wave radio?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Sc...
That’s already been done. I know of at least one novel result contributed by Claude to frontier physics. I’m sure there is more.
For it to be like a human it wouldn't just need to solve existing phsyics problems, it would need to push the field forward and introduce new paradigms.
Solving "open problems" will push the field forward.
My comment wasn't very long, yet you somehow still ignored the main part, "and introduce new paradigms". The point is whether it can do everything humans can, entirely new theoretical frameworks and ideas, such as string theory or dark matter, are not coming out of AI at the moment.
Creating new physics is the new AGI goal post