Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Theoretical Physics With Generative AI – #101
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Theoretical Physics With Generative AI – #101
All but the last 20 minutes of this episode should be comprehensible to non-physicists.
Steve explains where frontier AI models are in understanding frontier theoretical physics. The best analogy is to a “brilliant but unreliable genius colleague”!
He describes a specific example: the use of AI in recent research in quantum field theory (Tomonaga-Schwinger integrability conditions applied to state-dependent modifications of quantum mechanics), work now accepted for publication in Physics Letters B after peer review. Remarkably, the main idea in the paper originated de novo from GPT-5.
Links:
- X discussion - https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1996034522308026435
- Companion paper: Theoretical Physics With Generative AI - https://drive.google.com/file/d/16sxJuwsHoi-fvTFbri9Bu8B9bqA6lr1H/view
- Physics paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15935 | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269325008111
- Related discussion of AI and theoretical physics with Prof. Nirmalya Kajuri (IIT) and Prof. Jonathan Oppenheim (UCL) - https://youtu.be/BRuDd3l0e3k
- Related video: AIs Win Math Olympiad Gold: Prof. Lin Yang (UCLA) – Manifold #97 - https://youtu.be/8JeRCqNg7Rc
Chapter markers:
- (00:00) - Intro: AI discussion with specialized physics at the end
–
Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on X @hsu_steve.
Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models.
Mechanize is hiring!
https://mechanize.work/b/hsu
Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists.
For example:
Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors $500K salary
Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve $300K salary
Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.
View all episodes
By Steve HsuAll but the last 20 minutes of this episode should be comprehensible to non-physicists.
Steve explains where frontier AI models are in understanding frontier theoretical physics. The best analogy is to a “brilliant but unreliable genius colleague”!
He describes a specific example: the use of AI in recent research in quantum field theory (Tomonaga-Schwinger integrability conditions applied to state-dependent modifications of quantum mechanics), work now accepted for publication in Physics Letters B after peer review. Remarkably, the main idea in the paper originated de novo from GPT-5.
Links:
- X discussion - https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1996034522308026435
- Companion paper: Theoretical Physics With Generative AI - https://drive.google.com/file/d/16sxJuwsHoi-fvTFbri9Bu8B9bqA6lr1H/view
- Physics paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15935 | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269325008111
- Related discussion of AI and theoretical physics with Prof. Nirmalya Kajuri (IIT) and Prof. Jonathan Oppenheim (UCL) - https://youtu.be/BRuDd3l0e3k
- Related video: AIs Win Math Olympiad Gold: Prof. Lin Yang (UCLA) – Manifold #97 - https://youtu.be/8JeRCqNg7Rc
Chapter markers:
- (00:00) - Intro: AI discussion with specialized physics at the end
–
Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on X @hsu_steve.
Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models.
Mechanize is hiring!
https://mechanize.work/b/hsu
Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists.
For example:
Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors $500K salary
Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve $300K salary
Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.