Just read this wild New Scientist piece, AI basically took over the world's biggest physics conference
Hey everyone,
I came across this article about the recent American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Denver (14,000 physicists showed up), and damn, it sounds like AI wasn't just a side topic; it straight-up shook the whole event.
People in the audience were literally firing up ChatGPT/Claude on their laptops mid-talk to get simple explanations of stuff like transmon qubits, spintronics, and two-level systems. One Harvard guy (Matthew Schwartz) used Claude to co-author a quantum field theory paper in *two weeks* that he reckons would’ve taken a PhD student two years. He gave a talk called “10,000 Einsteins”, and straight-up said AI might solve the big unsolved problems (quantum gravity, anyone?) in about five years.
On one hand, it sounds insanely exciting, like suddenly everyone can think at an Einstein level. On the other, a bunch of speakers were pretty uneasy: AI spits out super plausible-looking science really fast, but it hides its assumptions and there’s no fool-proof way to check if it’s actually right. Peer review is already getting slammed by the flood of AI-assisted papers, and some folks are worried we’ll be left doing nothing but “taste-making” while the machines do the real work.
Quote that stuck with me: “Working with Claude made me feel like Einstein himself, and like everyone could become an Einstein equivalent.” But then he also said, “It’s amazing and also a little scary.”
Full article here if you want the details: <https://www.newscientist.com/article/2520506-how-ai-shook-the-worlds-largest-meeting-of-physicists/>
What do you all think? Are we heading for a golden age of physics where AI handles the grunt work and humans ask the big, weird questions? Or is this the beginning of the end of human-led theoretical physics? Anyone at the conference who can share what it actually felt like on the ground?
Would love to hear from physicists, AI researchers, or anyone following this space.
Cheers