During 9–13 November, physicists who work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers attended a workshop — the first of its kind — at which they discussed how advanced AI techniques could speed discoveries at the LHC.
The most hotly discussed issue was whether and how particle physics should make use of even more sophisticated AI, in the form of a technique called deep learning.
Although they emphasised that they would not be comfortable handing over control to an algorithm, several speakers at the CERN workshop discussed how deep learning could be applied to physics. Pierre Baldi, an AI researcher at the University of California, Irvine who has applied machine learning to various branches of science, described how he and his collaborators have done research suggesting that a deep-learning technique known as dark knowledge might aid in the search for dark matter.
Further details about the event are available here.