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Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture

Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture

18 segments available

Scaling laws took us from GPT-1 to GPT-5 Pro. But in order to crack physics, we’ll need a different approach. In this episode, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha talks to Liam Fedus, former VP of post-training research and co-creator of ChatGPT at OpenAI, and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, former head of materials science and chemistry research at Google DeepMind, on their new startup Periodic Labs and their plan to automate discovery in the hard sciences. 00:00 Introduction 02:17 The Role of LLMs in Physics and Chemistry Research 03:53 What is Periodic Labs? 05:25 The Importance of Experimentation 07:44 Challenges and Goals in Physics Research 14:45 Building the Team 17:29 Scaling Laws and Physical Verification 22:36 Focus on Superconductivity 25:33 Creating a Repeatable Process for ML Systems 26:08 Balancing Commercial Viability and Scientific Goals 27:39 Periodic's Mission and Industry Applications 28:49 Integrating Diverse Expertise in the Team 29:52 Teaching LLMs to Reason in Physics and Chemistry 31:29 The Importance of Collaboration and Learning 35:38 Deploying AI in Traditional Industries 41:03 Mid Training and Its Impact on Model Performance 45:21 Collaboration with Academia and Future Directions 49:49 What Makes a Great Researcher at Periodic? Follow Liam on X: https://x.com/LiamFedus Follow Dogus on X: https://x.com/ekindogus Learn more about Periodic: https://periodic.com/

Segments Timeline

1
0:00 - 2:18
2:18 duration444 words

Introduction

"ultimately sciences driven against experiment in the real world. And so that's what we're doing with periodic labs. We're taking these precursor technologies and we're saying okay if you care about ad..."

2
2:18 - 3:53
1:34 duration313 words

The Role of LLMs in Physics and Chemistry Research

"so Liam was working on LLMs and they were going really well. Um, and I was not using LLMs, but I was noticing that LM are becoming more and more impactful in my work. So one way it was becoming impact..."

3
3:53 - 5:27
1:34 duration251 words

What is Periodic Labs?

"found periodic. >> Well, let's take a second to talk about what periodic is and what does it do. So periodic labs is a frontier AI research lab that's trying to use LLMs to advance physics and chemist..."

4
5:27 - 7:44
2:16 duration403 words

The Importance of Experimentation

"for folks who might not be familiar to explain what you guys mean by a lab that will verify RL in the real world. Can you talk a little bit about how experiments work? How does how do how are AI model..."

5
7:44 - 14:46
7:02 duration1334 words

Challenges and Goals in Physics Research

"This lays a foundation, but ultimately science is driven against experiment in the real world. And so that's what we're doing with periodic labs. We're taking these precursor technologies and we're sa..."

6
14:46 - 17:29
2:42 duration491 words

Building the Team

"been so focused on basically putting together like this N of one team like these group of physicists, chemists, uh um simulation experts and some of the best machine learning researchers in the world ..."

7
17:29 - 22:36
5:06 duration966 words

Scaling Laws and Physical Verification

"know naively the current pre-training and post-training uh sort of pipelines at most of the frontier labs won't just eventually crack physics as well. Why why is is this idea of physical verification ..."

8
22:36 - 25:34
2:57 duration581 words

Focus on Superconductivity

"case of periodic I think you mentioned the first bel lines you guys are making are towards superc conductivity and magnetism right what is it about those domains that make them good candidates for the..."

9
25:34 - 26:08
0:34 duration102 words

Creating a Repeatable Process for ML Systems

"important for us to do the loop, but then create this repeatable process like how do you go from subdomain to subdomain? And there's really interesting questions about how well do the ML systems gener..."

10
26:08 - 27:40
1:32 duration243 words

Balancing Commercial Viability and Scientific Goals

">> So I I can see the argument for why um cracking room temperature superconductivity from an experimental basis is is extraordinary valuable for humanity. But you guys are building a startup. And um ..."

11
27:40 - 28:50
1:09 duration195 words

Periodic's Mission and Industry Applications

"maybe perhaps just being in Silicon Valley we you know we really think about like computer oriented work everything is digital everything is bits but there's so many industries Like we were kind of ta..."

12
28:50 - 29:52
1:01 duration200 words

Integrating Diverse Expertise in the Team

"deeper on the that in practice sort of a day in the life of a periodic uh team member where let's say half the team is this roughly right about half the team are ML scientists with machine learning ba..."

13
29:52 - 31:30
1:38 duration312 words

Teaching LLMs to Reason in Physics and Chemistry

"closely with each other. Um, so one of the things we're seeing is the physics and the chemists need to figure out how to teach the LLM how to reason about these things because I think the frontier AI ..."

14
31:30 - 35:41
4:10 duration812 words

The Importance of Collaboration and Learning

"we're making towards our internal superconductivity or physics goals actually is making our LLMs much better at serving our customers who are doing very similar workflows. Yeah, I think just culture, ..."

15
35:41 - 41:04
5:22 duration1007 words

Deploying AI in Traditional Industries

"taking a lot of the research that's going on at the company and deploying that out in the real world, the kinds of customers that we've talked about, space, defense, advanced manufacturing, these are ..."

16
41:04 - 45:21
4:17 duration787 words

Mid Training and Its Impact on Model Performance

"with pre-training, they're familiar with post- training, but in the periodic context, what does mid training mean? >> Yeah, sorry for the lingo. So, I think this this term came up uh years ago where i..."

17
45:21 - 49:50
4:28 duration837 words

Collaboration with Academia and Future Directions

"that a lot of the fundamental research in the physical sciences that uh we're talking about here physics, chemistry, biology has historically been done at university labs. Um is there a role at all th..."

18
49:50 - 51:30
1:40 duration285 words

What Makes a Great Researcher at Periodic?

"interested in joining periodic what are you guys looking for? First off, someone deeply curious. Uh someone who really wants to understand the machine learning, the science at a deeper level, who want..."