What can artificial intelligence do for physics?
Sabine Hossenfelder · OECD eBooks · 2023
In recent years, governments all over the world have launched research initiatives for artificial intelligence (AI). These range from Australia, Canada and the United States to the People’s Republic of China, Denmark, the European Commission, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Everyone suddenly has a strategy for “AI made in”, whatever happens to be their own part of the planet. In the coming decades, it is likely that tens of billions of public and private dollars, euros and Yuan renminbi will flow into the field. However, ask physicists what they think of AI, and they will probably be surprised. For them, AI was trendy in the 1980s. They prefer to call it “machine learning” and pride themselves on having used that term for decades. This essay summarises different applications for which AI physicists use AI, classifying them roughly into data analysis, modelling and model analysis.