In an Age of AI, a Physicist Seeks What Endures

Department of Energy selected 278 projects to fund as part of its Genesis Mission, meant to incorporate artificial intelligence into the scientific process. One project will use AI to help physicists search for a vanishingly rare particle transformation — a muon becoming an electron — by controlling different aspects of the Mu2e experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. And at what strength do our magnetic fields run?

Where is our target placed? Which ones of our systems need to be online?” Demers appreciates how AI may help to make quick adjustments to the experimental setup. Some of her reservations about the technology stem from the fact that popular large language models (LLMs) are trained on datasets full of others’ intellectual property — likely including Demers’ own writing — and don’t properly credit their sources.

In light of new developments in AI, physicists are having existential conversations about what it means to do physics research. What is enduring about the practice of physics itself? — that does not change with AI,” said Demers, who is leading an effort through the American Physical Society (APS) to produce an AI policy statement.