Artificial intelligence predicts future directions in quantum science

Physics World Weekly Podcast

Can artificial intelligence predict future research directions in quantum science? Listen to this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast to discover what is already possible.

My guests are Mario Krenn – who heads the Artificial Scientist Lab at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light – and Felix Frohnert, who is doing a PhD on the intersection of quantum physics and machine learning at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Frohnert, Krenn and colleagues published a paper earlier this year called “Discovering emergent connections in quantum physics research via dynamic word embeddings” in which they analysed more than 66,000 abstracts from the quantum-research literature to see if they could predict future trends in the field. They were particularly interested in the emergence of connections between previously isolated subfields of quantum science.

We chat about what motivated the duo to use machine learning to study quantum science; how their prediction system works; and I ask them whether they have been able to predict current trends in quantum science using historical data.

Their paper appears in the journal Machine Learning Science and Technology. It is published by IOP Publishing – which also brings you Physics World.  Krenn is on the editorial board of the journal and in the podcast he explains why it is important to have a platform to publish research at the intersection of physics and machine learning.

This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.

Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.

Find out more on our quantum channel.

 

2025-09-04 36 min Transcript

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly

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podcast.

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I'm Hamish Johnston.

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In this episode,

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I'm joined by two physicists

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who are exploring

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how artificial intelligence

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can be used to predict future directions

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in quantum science and technology.

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They are

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Mario Kran, who heads the artificial

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scientist lab at Germany's

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Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light,

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and Felix

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Frohnert,

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who is doing a PhD

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on the intersection

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of quantum physics and machine learning

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at Leiden University

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in The Netherlands.

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Earlier this year, Felix,

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Mario, and colleagues

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published a paper called discovering

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emergent connections in quantum physics research

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via dynamic word embeddings.

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And they join me today to chat about

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that work

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in which they analyzed more than 66,000

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abstracts

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from the quantum literature

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to see if they could predict

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future trends in the field.

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Hi, Mario and Felix. Welcome to the podcast.

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Hi, Mitch. Very nice, to see you. Glad

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to be here.

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So, Mario,

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can we start off by sort of delving

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into the history of this?

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Apparently, in the past, people have tried to

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use,

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data from the scientific literature

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to predict the evolution

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of a research field. Can you talk a

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bit about some of that early work and,

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and how successful it was?

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Yes.

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There have been a lot of, work in

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the past where people try to use this

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enormous amount of data and see how

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researchers work and how researchers could work. So

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looking at the strategy of how,

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research is done. This has interestingly,

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mainly been done by computational

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sociologists

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who look

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at science as a whole and analyze

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what

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strategies that people use and how we could

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accelerate those strategies.

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And maybe one of the most exciting work

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here in this field that at least,

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motivated me to look into this was a

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paper from

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02/2015,

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led by,

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Chicago

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computational sociologist,

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James Evans.

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And that paper, it was published in PNAS.

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It was called choosing experiments

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to accelerate

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collective discovery.

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And, therefore, the first time, I've seen how

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people use millions of scientific papers and patents

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to analyze what other concrete strategies that humans

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did,

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showing that those strategies are at a collective

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scale actually quite,

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improveable,

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let's say, like that. And then they did

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a lot of computer simulation to come up

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with potential different strategies.

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And they have pointed out that if you

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would follow if the collective would follow different

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strategies, you could theoretically,

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come to much faster,

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progress in science.

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But this was in 02/2015,

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and,

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this motivated

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me at the time that was still during

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my PhD to also try the same thing

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in my own field in quantum physics. And

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then we also,

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tried to use hundreds of thousands of papers

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to predict,

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what scientists will do in the field of

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quantum physics. And then we use the same

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techniques that James Evans, teams have used. Knowledge

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graphs where you have concepts that are the

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notes and edges

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that are formed when two concepts

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are connected,

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by a single paper. So you see somehow

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the evolution

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of,

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of what scientists

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did in the past.

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And that a number of,

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there are a number of follow-up papers came.

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So this one was published in 2020 in

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PNAS, and then we did the AI competition,

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but all was based on the same idea

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of using this knowledge graphs.

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And then,

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I met,

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Felix,

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and Evert,

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and they had a very different idea of

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how one could

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integrate

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scientific knowledge and especially the dynamics,

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and that is what this specific paper is

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about.

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I see. Okay. And and I I suppose

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it's well, is it obvious? I mean, it

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makes sense to me that you've got a

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huge amount of data, and that's where machine

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learning, artificial intelligence

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can really help. And and I think in

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the paper that you've published recently,

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you've looked at how machine learning can be

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used to look for

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emergent connections between subfields

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in quantum physics with the ultimate goal of

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forecasting

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the future direction of research.

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Can you explain what a subfield is and

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and perhaps give an example

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of an emergent

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connection. I think may maybe a lot of

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our listeners would know what a subfield is,

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but

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the emergent connection bit

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might be something new to them.

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Felix, could you, could you address that?

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Yeah. Sure. Of course. So for us,

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subfields in

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quantum physics within kind of this broader category

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would be something like,

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single photon quantum optics. Different sublet would be

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gravitational wave physics

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or topics related to, I don't know, fault

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tolerant quantum algorithms.

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All of these would fall under the umbrella

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term of quantum physics, but in of itself

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deal with very kinds of different questions and

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techniques.

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While quantum optics might focus on questions like

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how to generate,

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interfere, or detect single photons,

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topics like fault tolerant quantum algorithms

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might deal with questions about error correction

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or resource estimation,

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which, of course, fall under this umbrella term

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of, quantum physics but are conceptually quite

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distinct. But what we have seen in the

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past

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is that despite these differences, there can be

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fruitful overlaps

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between different

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subfields

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in general in science.

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One example that is quite prominent

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in the,

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kind of physics community has been, I think,

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the application of, machine learning to the study

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of quantum

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phase transitions,

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which is a connection that has only been

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made in around,

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2017,

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I think.

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Before that, these two

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fields

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were kind of completely distant. Machine learning at

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that time was mostly used for things like

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image classification or regression,

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and quantum phase transitions were studied with kind

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of very

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physics specific

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tools.

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But then in around, 2017,

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researchers realized that you could use measurements of,

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quantum systems to kind of treat them as

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structured data similar to images, making it possible

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to kind of combine these two techniques or

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apply machine learning methods from computer vision to

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physics problems.

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And this kind of quite simple connection but

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powerful idea,

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Combining these two distinct ideas

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has led to many fruitful results, basically. And

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the goal

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for

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this research project,

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Mario and I did, is to try to

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build or kind of improve a data driven

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method methods that helps to assess or even

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forecast

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ideas of kind of that type, basically.

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I see. And so, I mean, one thing

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that

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I can think of in, you know, in

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in experimental physics, for example, And I'd like

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to see, I mean, have I got the

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right idea here when I'm thinking about emergent

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connections?

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You know, for for example, you've got superconducting

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circuits.

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And, you know, in the past, superconducting

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circuits were were used to make

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very sensitive

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detectors of magnetic fields, weren't they, squids, which

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were used in medical physics and and and

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other research. But now

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superconducting circuits are used as qubits

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in quantum

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computing. So

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is that the sort of thing that you're

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looking at? You know, the the use of

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of of one quantum

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technology suddenly or well, probably not suddenly, but

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slowly

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becomes,

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useful in another area of physics? So moving

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from

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sensing

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to quantum computing. Is that, I mean, are

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those the sort of things that you're trying

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to predict in the future, or am I

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getting that wrong?

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Yes. This would be one of the examples.

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There are a number of other

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examples that are,

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where you would, as a human, potentially not

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see the connection,

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But just by having

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access to hundreds of thousands or millions of

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papers, the machine sees that there is some

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underlying connection.

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And then it can,

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say, okay. Very likely, this will be connected

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because I've seen this underlying connection before, and

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that always leads to connections.

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Yeah.

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I see. And, I mean, obviously, you know,

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being able to predict the future is very

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important.

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So who, I mean, who would benefit from

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this? I mean, it are you thinking of

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scientists who are trying to plan their career,

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or are you thinking of,

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research funders,

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looking at, you know, new areas to put

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money into or companies

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trying to work out what, you know, new

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technologies will emerge in the next little while.

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I mean, it sounds like it could benefit

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a lot of people.

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00:10:13,840 --> 00:10:15,279
So I think for both,

272
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:18,799
Mario and me, the motivation in the beginning

273
00:10:18,799 --> 00:10:21,220
was actually just a bit of, self interest

274
00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:25,120
at first. Because as researchers, I think one

275
00:10:25,120 --> 00:10:27,414
of the hardest tasks is to consistently come

276
00:10:27,414 --> 00:10:29,514
up with good and fruitful

277
00:10:29,975 --> 00:10:32,634
research ideas, either for ourselves

278
00:10:33,095 --> 00:10:34,475
or for our students.

279
00:10:34,934 --> 00:10:37,095
Because in order to kind of come up

280
00:10:37,095 --> 00:10:39,700
with many good research ideas, you need to

281
00:10:39,700 --> 00:10:42,019
have a mix of, like, good intuition about

282
00:10:42,019 --> 00:10:44,659
the topic, some experience, and sometimes even just

283
00:10:44,659 --> 00:10:46,019
a bit of luck to come up with,

284
00:10:46,339 --> 00:10:47,080
good ideas.

285
00:10:47,459 --> 00:10:49,379
And the hope for both of us was

286
00:10:49,379 --> 00:10:51,139
to kind of use such a model as

287
00:10:51,139 --> 00:10:52,360
sort of like an artificial

288
00:10:52,820 --> 00:10:54,695
muse in the sense that we can have

289
00:10:54,695 --> 00:10:57,414
a data driven method that helps us to

290
00:10:57,414 --> 00:11:00,695
uncover or assess combination of research topics that

291
00:11:00,695 --> 00:11:03,095
no one has considered before, where there's, like,

292
00:11:03,095 --> 00:11:06,074
no benchmark of, combining these two things

293
00:11:07,254 --> 00:11:07,754
together.

294
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:10,579
So who would benefit from that? Basically,

295
00:11:10,879 --> 00:11:13,539
anyone working in science who regularly needs to

296
00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:16,259
generate new research ideas or kind of project,

297
00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:18,259
project topics.

298
00:11:18,959 --> 00:11:21,139
Yeah. Good benefit from this tool, I think.

299
00:11:22,125 --> 00:11:25,184
I think the biggest benefit could come from

300
00:11:25,485 --> 00:11:25,985
collaborations,

301
00:11:27,804 --> 00:11:28,785
suggesting collaborations

302
00:11:29,325 --> 00:11:29,825
for

303
00:11:30,205 --> 00:11:32,465
researchers that are not in the same field,

304
00:11:32,764 --> 00:11:35,730
potentially that are in very far away fields.

305
00:11:35,970 --> 00:11:37,429
For instance, let's say I have

306
00:11:37,889 --> 00:11:38,870
a friend who works

307
00:11:39,570 --> 00:11:42,070
in astrophysics. I know nothing about astrophysics.

308
00:11:42,850 --> 00:11:44,389
Now I want to work together.

309
00:11:44,850 --> 00:11:45,509
I would

310
00:11:45,889 --> 00:11:48,709
potentially not even know where to start.

311
00:11:50,154 --> 00:11:52,735
I have my techniques. They have their techniques.

312
00:11:53,914 --> 00:11:54,735
I have no idea,

313
00:11:55,434 --> 00:11:57,514
what is their connection. But the machine has

314
00:11:57,514 --> 00:12:00,075
seen hundreds of thousands or millions of papers,

315
00:12:00,075 --> 00:12:02,335
and they could see some underlying

316
00:12:03,070 --> 00:12:04,450
connection that might,

317
00:12:05,389 --> 00:12:07,070
be possible in the future that has not

318
00:12:07,070 --> 00:12:07,809
been possible,

319
00:12:08,829 --> 00:12:11,149
or that has not been done so far.

320
00:12:11,149 --> 00:12:12,990
So I see a lot of potential for

321
00:12:12,990 --> 00:12:13,490
those

322
00:12:13,950 --> 00:12:15,089
very surprising,

323
00:12:15,470 --> 00:12:16,450
very distant

324
00:12:18,225 --> 00:12:18,725
collaborations.

325
00:12:19,105 --> 00:12:21,044
That would be really great.

326
00:12:21,985 --> 00:12:24,464
I see. And I wanted to ask you

327
00:12:24,464 --> 00:12:24,865
about,

328
00:12:25,345 --> 00:12:27,444
the data that you use to train

329
00:12:27,745 --> 00:12:28,644
your system.

330
00:12:29,024 --> 00:12:31,024
I mean, I'm guessing you that you're using

331
00:12:31,024 --> 00:12:31,764
the titles

332
00:12:32,360 --> 00:12:35,740
of, peer reviewed papers. You're using the abstracts.

333
00:12:35,879 --> 00:12:37,820
Are you also looking at,

334
00:12:39,079 --> 00:12:41,100
references that are made in papers

335
00:12:41,559 --> 00:12:45,000
in order to to make connections? What what

336
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:46,539
sort of input do you have?

337
00:12:48,004 --> 00:12:50,084
It's actually quite quite simple. So we use

338
00:12:50,084 --> 00:12:54,084
publicly available preprints of quantum physics papers from

339
00:12:54,084 --> 00:12:54,985
the archive.

340
00:12:56,004 --> 00:12:57,225
In general, researchers

341
00:12:57,605 --> 00:12:59,705
submitted their manuscripts to,

342
00:13:00,164 --> 00:13:03,705
websites like the archive before formal, formal publication,

343
00:13:04,139 --> 00:13:06,879
which makes the consent quite easily accessible,

344
00:13:07,580 --> 00:13:10,300
for us. And in particular, we focus on

345
00:13:10,300 --> 00:13:14,000
the abstracts of each preprint in this quantum

346
00:13:14,139 --> 00:13:14,639
physics,

347
00:13:15,580 --> 00:13:16,080
subsection.

348
00:13:16,725 --> 00:13:19,384
The idea behind that is that the abstract

349
00:13:19,764 --> 00:13:20,264
provides,

350
00:13:21,044 --> 00:13:23,684
provides a condensed summary of the kind of

351
00:13:23,684 --> 00:13:26,644
core ideas of the paper, which typically also

352
00:13:26,644 --> 00:13:29,125
includes kind of one or two sentences about

353
00:13:29,125 --> 00:13:29,865
the background,

354
00:13:30,325 --> 00:13:32,579
some information about the main results, and then

355
00:13:32,579 --> 00:13:35,139
also some information about the the impact,

356
00:13:35,779 --> 00:13:36,600
maybe even,

357
00:13:37,059 --> 00:13:38,039
about that paper.

358
00:13:38,579 --> 00:13:41,079
And only focusing on the abstract

359
00:13:41,379 --> 00:13:43,220
and not, for instance, on the kind of

360
00:13:43,220 --> 00:13:46,339
main figures in the paper simplifies the data

361
00:13:46,339 --> 00:13:49,404
quite a bit because, well, typically, in abstracts,

362
00:13:49,404 --> 00:13:50,625
you don't need to deal with,

363
00:13:51,165 --> 00:13:53,504
formulas or citations or references.

364
00:13:54,205 --> 00:13:56,524
And it also kind of, takes away all

365
00:13:56,524 --> 00:13:59,404
the guesswork with things like, figures, for for

366
00:13:59,404 --> 00:14:02,610
instance. Because what abstracts are typically text based,

367
00:14:03,470 --> 00:14:04,449
which means it's,

368
00:14:05,070 --> 00:14:07,730
much easier to kind of extract the information

369
00:14:07,949 --> 00:14:09,889
from that for the machine learning model.

370
00:14:11,070 --> 00:14:13,709
I see. And and is it possible to

371
00:14:13,709 --> 00:14:15,649
explain in simple terms

372
00:14:16,774 --> 00:14:19,254
how the the machine learning is used to

373
00:14:19,254 --> 00:14:21,174
process these data? I mean, you know, sort

374
00:14:21,174 --> 00:14:23,414
of keep in mind that you're you're speaking

375
00:14:23,414 --> 00:14:24,154
to physicists

376
00:14:25,014 --> 00:14:25,834
rather than

377
00:14:26,134 --> 00:14:28,154
computer scientists. Is there

378
00:14:28,559 --> 00:14:30,899
is there an easy way to describe

379
00:14:31,440 --> 00:14:33,779
how it's done? Or may maybe there's not

380
00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:36,320
an easy way. But, I mean, you know,

381
00:14:36,320 --> 00:14:38,000
how would you explain it to a colleague

382
00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:40,980
who's a physicist rather than a computer scientist?

383
00:14:42,504 --> 00:14:46,044
For sure. So in the machine learning pipeline,

384
00:14:46,184 --> 00:14:49,004
there are three main steps. There is a

385
00:14:49,144 --> 00:14:52,584
data collection phase, there is the words embedding

386
00:14:52,584 --> 00:14:55,485
phase, and a training and prediction phase.

387
00:14:55,820 --> 00:14:58,539
The first step, data collection, kind of connects

388
00:14:58,539 --> 00:15:00,639
to the previous question you asked,

389
00:15:01,740 --> 00:15:04,299
where we kind of take a bunch of,

390
00:15:04,779 --> 00:15:08,080
quantum physics publications, look at the abstract,

391
00:15:08,634 --> 00:15:10,894
and then from each abstract, identify

392
00:15:11,274 --> 00:15:14,235
key scientific concepts we are interested in tracking

393
00:15:14,235 --> 00:15:17,054
over time, which in our case are, well,

394
00:15:17,355 --> 00:15:19,615
quantum physics concepts, things like,

395
00:15:19,995 --> 00:15:20,495
entanglement,

396
00:15:21,115 --> 00:15:23,534
quantum circuits, or phase transition.

397
00:15:24,610 --> 00:15:25,590
The second step,

398
00:15:26,049 --> 00:15:26,549
the

399
00:15:27,330 --> 00:15:30,129
word embedding is then the kind of key

400
00:15:30,129 --> 00:15:34,070
idea of this paper. Because in order to

401
00:15:34,210 --> 00:15:35,830
use machine learning to

402
00:15:36,769 --> 00:15:37,269
connect

403
00:15:37,730 --> 00:15:38,549
these concepts,

404
00:15:39,004 --> 00:15:40,784
You need to be able to translate

405
00:15:41,164 --> 00:15:42,384
these words

406
00:15:42,764 --> 00:15:45,804
into numbers that a machine learning model can

407
00:15:45,804 --> 00:15:49,084
understand and process that somehow encodes their meaning

408
00:15:49,084 --> 00:15:49,584
and

409
00:15:49,964 --> 00:15:50,464
usage.

410
00:15:51,004 --> 00:15:54,460
And, yeah, kind of simple ideas like just

411
00:15:54,460 --> 00:15:57,019
giving each word you're interested in a unique

412
00:15:57,019 --> 00:15:59,740
number, of course, wouldn't really work because this

413
00:15:59,740 --> 00:16:02,160
would throw away all the contextual information

414
00:16:02,540 --> 00:16:05,565
about how similar or dissimilar certain words are

415
00:16:05,725 --> 00:16:07,105
or how they are used,

416
00:16:07,804 --> 00:16:10,524
in the context of these abstracts. So what

417
00:16:10,524 --> 00:16:13,404
we do instead is a technique called word

418
00:16:13,404 --> 00:16:16,845
embeddings, which basically turns each word into the

419
00:16:16,845 --> 00:16:17,345
abstract,

420
00:16:17,820 --> 00:16:18,320
into

421
00:16:18,779 --> 00:16:19,679
a high dimensional

422
00:16:20,460 --> 00:16:23,820
vector, which somehow encodes its meaning or how

423
00:16:23,820 --> 00:16:25,200
it is used.

424
00:16:25,740 --> 00:16:28,940
And then you kind of use these,

425
00:16:29,740 --> 00:16:32,460
vectors for the machine learning model. I tried

426
00:16:32,460 --> 00:16:34,355
to come up with a simple example to

427
00:16:34,355 --> 00:16:35,654
kind of highlight

428
00:16:36,115 --> 00:16:38,154
how this could look like. And for this,

429
00:16:38,154 --> 00:16:39,815
I have, like, two sentences.

430
00:16:40,674 --> 00:16:42,294
So the sun is hot

431
00:16:42,674 --> 00:16:45,794
and the moon is cold, which you could

432
00:16:45,794 --> 00:16:48,455
try to encode with such a word embedding.

433
00:16:48,620 --> 00:16:50,620
And in the end, what you would look

434
00:16:50,620 --> 00:16:52,000
for in the embeddings

435
00:16:52,379 --> 00:16:54,459
are then kind of a representation of how

436
00:16:54,459 --> 00:16:56,220
these individual words are used in these two

437
00:16:56,220 --> 00:16:58,779
sentences. So for instance, on some kind of

438
00:16:58,779 --> 00:17:01,179
axis in the embedding, the words sun and

439
00:17:01,179 --> 00:17:02,325
moon might

440
00:17:02,804 --> 00:17:05,285
share one dimension because they're used as the

441
00:17:05,285 --> 00:17:06,904
subjects in the sentences.

442
00:17:07,285 --> 00:17:09,865
The words hot and cold might then lie

443
00:17:09,924 --> 00:17:12,805
might then lie on different axis because they

444
00:17:12,805 --> 00:17:14,505
kind of represent the temperature

445
00:17:15,285 --> 00:17:15,990
of an object.

446
00:17:17,029 --> 00:17:19,269
And the idea is then that somehow the

447
00:17:19,269 --> 00:17:20,650
embedding also encodes

448
00:17:21,990 --> 00:17:24,150
how these different words relate to each other.

449
00:17:24,150 --> 00:17:26,150
So for instance, if you would compute the

450
00:17:26,150 --> 00:17:27,769
overlap between the vector

451
00:17:28,085 --> 00:17:30,984
of the word sun and hot, it should,

452
00:17:31,444 --> 00:17:33,865
if the embedding is well trained, be larger

453
00:17:34,085 --> 00:17:36,964
as then the embedding between sun and cold

454
00:17:36,964 --> 00:17:38,884
because sun and hot are kind of more

455
00:17:38,884 --> 00:17:39,865
closely aligned.

456
00:17:40,325 --> 00:17:42,005
Yeah. This is kind of the the general

457
00:17:42,005 --> 00:17:44,390
idea of how we want to encode the

458
00:17:44,529 --> 00:17:46,309
underlying information about the physics

459
00:17:46,690 --> 00:17:47,589
into these

460
00:17:48,130 --> 00:17:48,630
vectors.

461
00:17:49,250 --> 00:17:50,950
And then the only thing that this,

462
00:17:52,769 --> 00:17:54,769
machine learning model that we then kind of

463
00:17:54,769 --> 00:17:56,210
train to do the predictions in the end

464
00:17:56,210 --> 00:17:58,115
does is look at,

465
00:17:58,974 --> 00:18:01,455
two of these vectors and then try to

466
00:18:01,455 --> 00:18:03,474
predict whether these two vectors

467
00:18:03,775 --> 00:18:05,634
will appear in the same abstract

468
00:18:05,934 --> 00:18:06,674
in a given,

469
00:18:07,855 --> 00:18:08,595
time frame.

470
00:18:09,150 --> 00:18:10,910
What we do in the paper is we

471
00:18:10,910 --> 00:18:11,410
define

472
00:18:11,710 --> 00:18:14,049
a training window, so for instance, from

473
00:18:14,430 --> 00:18:16,670
2000 to 02/2010,

474
00:18:16,670 --> 00:18:19,170
and look at which concept pairs were not

475
00:18:19,390 --> 00:18:22,515
linked yet in this tracking window. And what

476
00:18:22,515 --> 00:18:24,595
the model, tries to do is then to

477
00:18:24,595 --> 00:18:28,195
predict which of these unconnected pairs are likely

478
00:18:28,195 --> 00:18:30,695
to appear together in future abstracts

479
00:18:31,075 --> 00:18:33,795
within a time window of three years, for

480
00:18:33,795 --> 00:18:34,295
instance.

481
00:18:34,789 --> 00:18:36,789
And then the idea is that if you

482
00:18:36,789 --> 00:18:38,710
want some kind of use this machine learning

483
00:18:38,710 --> 00:18:41,029
model for inference to make kind of further

484
00:18:41,029 --> 00:18:43,769
predictions, you basically just shift the time window

485
00:18:44,069 --> 00:18:47,190
from kind of 2,000 to 2,010. You could

486
00:18:47,190 --> 00:18:49,829
also use it to predict from 2,010 to

487
00:18:49,829 --> 00:18:50,684
2,020

488
00:18:51,164 --> 00:18:53,404
or even, further. That's kind of the the

489
00:18:53,404 --> 00:18:54,305
general idea.

490
00:18:54,684 --> 00:18:55,985
I would like to mention

491
00:18:56,445 --> 00:18:56,945
that

492
00:18:57,245 --> 00:18:59,505
what Felix just explained is the

493
00:18:59,884 --> 00:19:00,785
main difference

494
00:19:01,164 --> 00:19:02,924
from our work to what has been done

495
00:19:02,924 --> 00:19:03,424
before.

496
00:19:03,839 --> 00:19:05,519
So before I close what I mentioned in

497
00:19:05,519 --> 00:19:07,299
the beginning, the computational sociologists

498
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:10,339
and also in my own previous

499
00:19:10,720 --> 00:19:13,519
work, we have built up knowledge graphs. And

500
00:19:13,519 --> 00:19:14,339
knowledge graphs,

501
00:19:15,039 --> 00:19:18,559
have concepts that are the vertices of the

502
00:19:18,559 --> 00:19:20,875
graph, and edges are drawn when,

503
00:19:21,974 --> 00:19:24,234
two concepts are mentioned in the paper.

504
00:19:25,335 --> 00:19:25,835
Now

505
00:19:26,294 --> 00:19:28,154
when I just use the concepts,

506
00:19:28,774 --> 00:19:31,595
I throw away everything about the

507
00:19:32,054 --> 00:19:33,269
context of that word.

508
00:19:34,150 --> 00:19:35,930
That's exactly what Felix mentioned.

509
00:19:36,309 --> 00:19:38,009
Basically, I just define

510
00:19:38,309 --> 00:19:40,390
the word as a number and remove all

511
00:19:40,390 --> 00:19:41,529
of the other information.

512
00:19:42,070 --> 00:19:44,710
But now with the technique that, Felix just

513
00:19:44,710 --> 00:19:47,244
explained that we published in this paper, we

514
00:19:47,244 --> 00:19:49,585
get much more context of the words

515
00:19:50,044 --> 00:19:52,065
by using this more modern,

516
00:19:52,605 --> 00:19:55,565
word embedding instead of knowledge graphs. That comes

517
00:19:55,565 --> 00:19:57,265
with extra technical,

518
00:19:58,044 --> 00:20:00,144
challenges that we had to,

519
00:20:00,525 --> 00:20:01,025
solve,

520
00:20:01,380 --> 00:20:03,720
But then you can get much more context

521
00:20:04,099 --> 00:20:06,680
of the word, of the phrases itself,

522
00:20:07,059 --> 00:20:07,880
and, hopefully,

523
00:20:08,180 --> 00:20:09,799
then get better predictions.

524
00:20:11,059 --> 00:20:14,339
I see. And you use data that went

525
00:20:14,339 --> 00:20:16,259
back to 1994.

526
00:20:16,259 --> 00:20:18,055
So that's, you know, we're looking more

527
00:20:18,595 --> 00:20:20,454
than thirty years ago.

528
00:20:21,954 --> 00:20:23,634
I mean, if you sort of run your

529
00:20:23,634 --> 00:20:25,335
system using older data,

530
00:20:25,795 --> 00:20:28,375
do do you find that it predicts things

531
00:20:28,835 --> 00:20:30,214
that actually happened

532
00:20:30,789 --> 00:20:32,410
a decade or two later?

533
00:20:33,990 --> 00:20:36,970
The short answer to that would be yes.

534
00:20:37,509 --> 00:20:38,410
Well, congratulations.

535
00:20:40,630 --> 00:20:42,250
And there are basically

536
00:20:42,549 --> 00:20:45,190
two different types of predictions our model can

537
00:20:45,190 --> 00:20:48,044
make. Our model can make validation predictions

538
00:20:48,345 --> 00:20:49,404
where we can still

539
00:20:49,704 --> 00:20:52,044
check the outcome and truly

540
00:20:52,345 --> 00:20:53,085
new predictions

541
00:20:53,384 --> 00:20:56,444
where we don't entirely know the outcome yet.

542
00:20:56,585 --> 00:20:58,424
As you mentioned, our model was trained on

543
00:20:58,424 --> 00:21:01,259
data from nineteen nineteen four till,

544
00:21:01,660 --> 00:21:02,559
2017,

545
00:21:02,859 --> 00:21:04,859
in our case, where the model was kind

546
00:21:04,859 --> 00:21:06,640
of used to predict,

547
00:21:07,900 --> 00:21:09,980
contact connections within the next three years, so

548
00:21:09,980 --> 00:21:11,279
until 2019.

549
00:21:11,820 --> 00:21:14,320
And the validation predictions we did

550
00:21:14,904 --> 00:21:15,644
were then

551
00:21:16,025 --> 00:21:18,184
by, kind of shift the time window, as

552
00:21:18,184 --> 00:21:20,744
I explained for the, previous question, where we

553
00:21:20,744 --> 00:21:21,644
tried to predict

554
00:21:22,904 --> 00:21:24,684
or could yeah. Validation predictions,

555
00:21:25,464 --> 00:21:26,904
from 2020

556
00:21:26,904 --> 00:21:28,664
till 2023

557
00:21:28,664 --> 00:21:31,220
where there still is real world data that

558
00:21:31,220 --> 00:21:32,599
we can test against.

559
00:21:33,139 --> 00:21:35,480
And our model managed to kind of discover

560
00:21:36,019 --> 00:21:39,139
a couple of emergent research directions there, which

561
00:21:39,139 --> 00:21:42,765
includes ideas like using tensor network methods to

562
00:21:42,765 --> 00:21:45,724
simulate local quantum circuits, so quantum circuits with

563
00:21:45,724 --> 00:21:47,105
only minimal entanglement,

564
00:21:47,724 --> 00:21:50,384
or ideas of using machine learning to optimize

565
00:21:50,445 --> 00:21:51,984
the structure of,

566
00:21:53,325 --> 00:21:54,144
quantum circuits.

567
00:21:54,460 --> 00:21:56,539
And these kind of, two examples and a

568
00:21:56,539 --> 00:21:58,779
few more are things we discuss in the

569
00:21:58,779 --> 00:22:00,320
paper in detail, basically.

570
00:22:01,820 --> 00:22:03,680
The question about truly

571
00:22:04,059 --> 00:22:04,720
new predictions

572
00:22:05,340 --> 00:22:07,440
is slightly more complicated,

573
00:22:08,615 --> 00:22:09,434
I would say.

574
00:22:10,774 --> 00:22:11,274
One

575
00:22:11,654 --> 00:22:12,154
idea

576
00:22:12,615 --> 00:22:14,534
that I need to discuss for further first

577
00:22:14,534 --> 00:22:15,914
is the idea of,

578
00:22:16,454 --> 00:22:16,954
calibration

579
00:22:17,335 --> 00:22:18,294
of the,

580
00:22:18,855 --> 00:22:20,554
prediction model. Because

581
00:22:21,095 --> 00:22:23,390
in the end, what you are generally interested

582
00:22:23,390 --> 00:22:25,569
in is to have kind of a

583
00:22:25,869 --> 00:22:27,809
small subsets of predictions

584
00:22:28,109 --> 00:22:30,930
where the model is super subbed that,

585
00:22:31,630 --> 00:22:32,369
these predictions

586
00:22:32,990 --> 00:22:33,650
are actually,

587
00:22:34,509 --> 00:22:36,190
correct. So one thing that you need to

588
00:22:36,190 --> 00:22:37,569
check first is

589
00:22:37,964 --> 00:22:39,184
is the confidence

590
00:22:39,884 --> 00:22:42,525
of your machine learning model aligns to the

591
00:22:42,525 --> 00:22:43,025
probability

592
00:22:43,404 --> 00:22:46,625
of being right or false in this prediction?

593
00:22:46,684 --> 00:22:48,044
This is kind of one section in the

594
00:22:48,044 --> 00:22:49,105
paper where we analyze,

595
00:22:49,724 --> 00:22:51,265
like, how our model performs,

596
00:22:52,044 --> 00:22:54,279
in this aspect. And it turns out that

597
00:22:54,279 --> 00:22:56,519
this actually works kind of well. So if

598
00:22:56,519 --> 00:22:58,200
we look at the output probability of the

599
00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:00,519
model, this is aligned quite well with the

600
00:23:00,519 --> 00:23:03,259
probability of the model being false or correct.

601
00:23:03,559 --> 00:23:05,420
So what you can do then is basically

602
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:06,859
predict

603
00:23:07,615 --> 00:23:09,934
many, many concepts, like, tens of thousands of

604
00:23:09,934 --> 00:23:10,434
concepts,

605
00:23:10,734 --> 00:23:14,255
and then rank them by their probability of

606
00:23:14,255 --> 00:23:15,554
actually occurring

607
00:23:15,934 --> 00:23:16,674
in the future.

608
00:23:17,375 --> 00:23:20,170
And we we did that and found a

609
00:23:20,170 --> 00:23:21,710
subset of predictions that have

610
00:23:22,009 --> 00:23:23,630
over 99.9%

611
00:23:24,009 --> 00:23:24,509
probability

612
00:23:25,289 --> 00:23:27,930
of occurring. And this was very interesting because

613
00:23:27,930 --> 00:23:29,230
most of these concepts

614
00:23:29,529 --> 00:23:32,730
seem to be related to single photon quantum

615
00:23:32,730 --> 00:23:33,230
optics.

616
00:23:33,609 --> 00:23:36,474
So things that are related to concepts like

617
00:23:36,474 --> 00:23:38,734
photon detector and spatial modes

618
00:23:39,035 --> 00:23:41,295
or concepts like polarization entanglements

619
00:23:41,674 --> 00:23:42,174
and,

620
00:23:42,554 --> 00:23:43,375
single photon,

621
00:23:44,075 --> 00:23:45,214
single photon source.

622
00:23:46,234 --> 00:23:48,234
And this was actually something I had a

623
00:23:48,234 --> 00:23:51,130
chat about with with a quantum opt optics

624
00:23:51,130 --> 00:23:53,930
professor from Leiden University, where I'm doing my

625
00:23:53,930 --> 00:23:54,430
PhD.

626
00:23:54,890 --> 00:23:57,690
And all of these predictions actually somehow seem

627
00:23:57,690 --> 00:23:58,269
to make

628
00:23:58,730 --> 00:24:00,430
sense, but are also already

629
00:24:01,130 --> 00:24:03,230
known. So the catch with that is basically

630
00:24:03,724 --> 00:24:05,184
that some of the publications

631
00:24:06,445 --> 00:24:08,924
that were in the kind of subset of

632
00:24:08,924 --> 00:24:09,904
quantum physics,

633
00:24:10,525 --> 00:24:11,744
abstracts that we used

634
00:24:12,285 --> 00:24:14,765
mentioned these concepts. But, of course, we did

635
00:24:14,765 --> 00:24:15,424
not specifically

636
00:24:15,805 --> 00:24:18,865
train our model on optics papers,

637
00:24:19,259 --> 00:24:22,400
which means it's kind of solve these connections,

638
00:24:22,539 --> 00:24:23,440
make these connections,

639
00:24:23,820 --> 00:24:26,220
but it never saw the actual kind of

640
00:24:26,220 --> 00:24:26,720
papers

641
00:24:27,180 --> 00:24:29,580
where these concepts are explicitly mentioned. So there

642
00:24:29,580 --> 00:24:30,240
are kind of

643
00:24:30,779 --> 00:24:33,644
two different interpretations I can make on that.

644
00:24:33,724 --> 00:24:36,205
Kind of one optimistic interpretation would be that

645
00:24:36,205 --> 00:24:38,464
our machine learning model kind of has discovered

646
00:24:38,605 --> 00:24:41,325
the concept of single photon quantum optics on

647
00:24:41,325 --> 00:24:41,984
its own,

648
00:24:42,285 --> 00:24:44,384
and the kind of slightly more conservative,

649
00:24:45,164 --> 00:24:47,460
interpretation would be that in order to get

650
00:24:47,940 --> 00:24:49,880
very meaningful predictions in the future,

651
00:24:50,659 --> 00:24:51,960
one would need to train

652
00:24:52,579 --> 00:24:54,759
our model in kind of all physics applications

653
00:24:54,980 --> 00:24:56,679
to rule out these

654
00:24:57,059 --> 00:25:00,039
kind of trivial or simple predictions

655
00:25:00,445 --> 00:25:02,205
that might have not occurred together in the

656
00:25:02,205 --> 00:25:03,825
training set, but

657
00:25:04,445 --> 00:25:06,205
might be, like, somewhere out there on the

658
00:25:06,205 --> 00:25:07,105
Internet, basically.

659
00:25:08,285 --> 00:25:10,765
I see. And is that is that something

660
00:25:10,765 --> 00:25:11,585
that's possible,

661
00:25:12,605 --> 00:25:14,465
you know, to expand the training

662
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:16,380
to include all

663
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,640
physics papers? I mean, I mean, first of

664
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:21,420
all, you know, would you have the computing

665
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,440
resources to do that, and and would that

666
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:25,180
be useful,

667
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:27,980
in terms of making predictions?

668
00:25:28,954 --> 00:25:30,894
Maybe you wanna speak about that, Mario?

669
00:25:31,434 --> 00:25:31,934
Yes.

670
00:25:32,714 --> 00:25:33,615
So this is,

671
00:25:34,075 --> 00:25:37,755
definitely possible. Actually, we had, different status where

672
00:25:37,755 --> 00:25:38,894
we not only used,

673
00:25:39,275 --> 00:25:40,950
quantum physics as

674
00:25:41,509 --> 00:25:42,970
input data, but also,

675
00:25:45,109 --> 00:25:48,230
entire physics. Or in one study, we even

676
00:25:48,230 --> 00:25:49,690
used all published

677
00:25:50,149 --> 00:25:50,649
papers,

678
00:25:51,509 --> 00:25:52,329
that exist.

679
00:25:53,525 --> 00:25:55,944
I just looked it up 58,000,000

680
00:25:56,244 --> 00:25:59,224
research papers. So that is possible to take

681
00:25:59,365 --> 00:26:00,505
much, much larger,

682
00:26:02,964 --> 00:26:03,464
subsets

683
00:26:03,845 --> 00:26:04,325
of,

684
00:26:04,884 --> 00:26:05,339
science.

685
00:26:06,220 --> 00:26:07,200
Of course, then

686
00:26:07,579 --> 00:26:09,119
using this data will become

687
00:26:09,500 --> 00:26:10,000
significantly

688
00:26:10,460 --> 00:26:12,000
more computationally expensive

689
00:26:12,460 --> 00:26:15,339
so that the process will be more expensive.

690
00:26:15,339 --> 00:26:15,839
But,

691
00:26:16,380 --> 00:26:18,799
if we really want to go into predicting

692
00:26:18,940 --> 00:26:19,440
novel

693
00:26:20,194 --> 00:26:22,375
research directions, then we have to do this.

694
00:26:22,515 --> 00:26:24,115
So I think in our paper, we showed

695
00:26:24,115 --> 00:26:25,654
it as this huge potential.

696
00:26:26,275 --> 00:26:27,494
And now

697
00:26:27,795 --> 00:26:28,855
we could go into,

698
00:26:29,634 --> 00:26:32,355
thinking about using it for whole physics or

699
00:26:32,355 --> 00:26:35,320
for whole natural science or just whatever

700
00:26:35,779 --> 00:26:36,759
for all science.

701
00:26:37,859 --> 00:26:39,700
Right. Okay. And is that, I mean, is

702
00:26:39,700 --> 00:26:41,400
that something that you and your

703
00:26:41,700 --> 00:26:44,420
collaborators would be interested in? Or do or

704
00:26:44,420 --> 00:26:45,539
do you think that,

705
00:26:46,580 --> 00:26:49,434
that, you know, may maybe maybe people working

706
00:26:49,654 --> 00:26:52,235
or studying other fields, people who study

707
00:26:53,095 --> 00:26:54,154
how biology

708
00:26:54,455 --> 00:26:57,815
evolves, for example, would, would join with you?

709
00:26:57,815 --> 00:26:59,460
I mean, do do do you see this?

710
00:26:59,940 --> 00:27:01,399
I mean, is this a new field

711
00:27:01,700 --> 00:27:03,700
or a growing field that,

712
00:27:04,339 --> 00:27:06,200
that you think you've made a significant

713
00:27:06,500 --> 00:27:07,720
contribution to,

714
00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:10,740
and, you know, other people will follow on

715
00:27:10,740 --> 00:27:11,480
from you?

716
00:27:12,464 --> 00:27:12,964
There

717
00:27:13,664 --> 00:27:15,265
there are, there are a lot of groups

718
00:27:15,265 --> 00:27:16,244
that look into

719
00:27:17,825 --> 00:27:20,805
this direction or related direction. It's a huge,

720
00:27:21,744 --> 00:27:22,644
field to,

721
00:27:23,744 --> 00:27:25,049
to try to come up with

722
00:27:25,690 --> 00:27:29,610
computer inspired new ideas in a, data driven

723
00:27:29,610 --> 00:27:30,110
way.

724
00:27:30,809 --> 00:27:32,970
We show one method how that is done.

725
00:27:32,970 --> 00:27:34,350
There are many other methods.

726
00:27:35,450 --> 00:27:36,830
Now the question is,

727
00:27:37,369 --> 00:27:37,869
is

728
00:27:38,455 --> 00:27:40,555
predicting what scientists will do,

729
00:27:41,654 --> 00:27:43,815
is this the one thing you need to

730
00:27:43,815 --> 00:27:46,075
discover new ideas or are there other things?

731
00:27:46,535 --> 00:27:48,855
For instance, you can think about, can I

732
00:27:48,855 --> 00:27:49,355
predict

733
00:27:49,735 --> 00:27:50,235
impactful

734
00:27:50,775 --> 00:27:51,914
research directions?

735
00:27:52,940 --> 00:27:54,779
And just a few months ago, we have

736
00:27:54,779 --> 00:27:57,519
also published in machine learning science and technology

737
00:27:57,579 --> 00:27:57,980
and,

738
00:27:58,380 --> 00:27:58,880
IOP,

739
00:27:59,980 --> 00:28:00,480
journal,

740
00:28:00,859 --> 00:28:02,240
a paper where we showed,

741
00:28:02,779 --> 00:28:04,539
that was, led by,

742
00:28:05,065 --> 00:28:07,785
my former post doc, Shumei Gu, who is

743
00:28:07,785 --> 00:28:08,924
also coauthor

744
00:28:09,225 --> 00:28:10,684
of the paper with Felix,

745
00:28:11,705 --> 00:28:14,445
that we showed that you can actually predict

746
00:28:14,505 --> 00:28:15,005
also,

747
00:28:15,865 --> 00:28:17,644
impactful research directions.

748
00:28:18,220 --> 00:28:20,240
So let's say you have two concepts

749
00:28:20,940 --> 00:28:23,600
that have never been started before together.

750
00:28:24,700 --> 00:28:26,000
Now the question is,

751
00:28:27,019 --> 00:28:28,160
will there be papers

752
00:28:28,460 --> 00:28:31,740
that started it? And the next question is,

753
00:28:31,740 --> 00:28:33,759
will those paper that studied this

754
00:28:34,195 --> 00:28:36,595
topics that have never been studied before, will

755
00:28:36,595 --> 00:28:37,734
they be impactful?

756
00:28:38,115 --> 00:28:38,775
Will they,

757
00:28:39,474 --> 00:28:40,775
create a lot of citations?

758
00:28:41,234 --> 00:28:42,615
And very surprisingly

759
00:28:42,914 --> 00:28:45,015
to us, this is also predictable.

760
00:28:46,410 --> 00:28:48,970
So now we can also predict in some

761
00:28:48,970 --> 00:28:52,430
way what future research directions could be impactful.

762
00:28:54,009 --> 00:28:56,170
Of course, what Felix has done, what is

763
00:28:56,170 --> 00:28:58,730
new, and what could, could be done and

764
00:28:58,730 --> 00:29:00,730
what might be done. And then I think

765
00:29:00,730 --> 00:29:03,644
the final question is what research directions

766
00:29:03,945 --> 00:29:05,005
are interesting

767
00:29:05,384 --> 00:29:06,205
for humans?

768
00:29:09,305 --> 00:29:10,045
For that,

769
00:29:11,224 --> 00:29:12,285
one could do,

770
00:29:12,904 --> 00:29:14,205
large scale evaluations,

771
00:29:15,384 --> 00:29:16,285
using humans.

772
00:29:16,599 --> 00:29:17,419
We have started,

773
00:29:18,039 --> 00:29:20,359
doing this, and I think there are thousand

774
00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:21,899
different things one can do.

775
00:29:23,159 --> 00:29:24,779
One thing I've seen

776
00:29:25,079 --> 00:29:25,899
in this whole,

777
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,105
this whole range of work is the humans

778
00:29:30,404 --> 00:29:33,144
are exceptionally good in coming up with ideas,

779
00:29:33,284 --> 00:29:35,444
and it's really not clear where those ideas

780
00:29:35,444 --> 00:29:36,184
come from.

781
00:29:36,484 --> 00:29:38,404
I think there's a lot of a lot

782
00:29:38,404 --> 00:29:39,944
of things that we need to understand.

783
00:29:40,325 --> 00:29:42,644
From the human perspective, why are human create

784
00:29:42,644 --> 00:29:45,150
scientists? Where are those ideas coming from? That

785
00:29:45,150 --> 00:29:47,089
we can artificially recreate this.

786
00:29:48,029 --> 00:29:48,690
I see.

787
00:29:48,990 --> 00:29:51,409
And and what about, you know, this specific

788
00:29:51,470 --> 00:29:51,970
project,

789
00:29:52,669 --> 00:29:56,190
that that you, Felix, and, Mario are working

790
00:29:56,190 --> 00:29:56,595
on?

791
00:29:57,394 --> 00:29:59,474
Are you are are you following up this

792
00:29:59,474 --> 00:30:01,894
research? Are are you planning on improving

793
00:30:02,515 --> 00:30:03,734
your machine learning

794
00:30:04,275 --> 00:30:04,775
technique,

795
00:30:06,194 --> 00:30:08,515
or maybe applying it to more data? I

796
00:30:08,515 --> 00:30:10,515
suppose well, you have applied it to more

797
00:30:10,515 --> 00:30:12,779
data. What what what's next for you? Or

798
00:30:12,779 --> 00:30:14,640
are you moving on to something else?

799
00:30:15,580 --> 00:30:17,580
So there are a couple of kind of,

800
00:30:18,380 --> 00:30:20,940
obvious follow-up research directions that,

801
00:30:21,420 --> 00:30:22,559
one could pursue.

802
00:30:23,100 --> 00:30:23,660
There are,

803
00:30:24,955 --> 00:30:27,035
a couple of ideas about how to improve

804
00:30:27,035 --> 00:30:29,515
the embedding that we came up with,

805
00:30:30,394 --> 00:30:31,134
even further.

806
00:30:31,595 --> 00:30:33,695
One of these ideas would be that

807
00:30:34,075 --> 00:30:36,414
the kind of main application of our

808
00:30:37,035 --> 00:30:39,215
embedding was to kind of replace the information

809
00:30:39,275 --> 00:30:41,210
in the knowledge graph as Mavi

810
00:30:41,509 --> 00:30:42,809
mentioned earlier. But

811
00:30:43,109 --> 00:30:44,490
you don't necessarily

812
00:30:45,269 --> 00:30:46,869
need to view it in this kind of

813
00:30:46,869 --> 00:30:49,669
binary setting of either only using the knowledge

814
00:30:49,669 --> 00:30:51,990
graph or or embedding. You could also come

815
00:30:51,990 --> 00:30:54,315
up with some kind of combined representation of

816
00:30:54,535 --> 00:30:55,355
both that,

817
00:30:56,134 --> 00:30:58,535
takes kind of as much information as possible

818
00:30:58,535 --> 00:30:59,734
and then just kind of gives it to

819
00:30:59,734 --> 00:31:01,734
the machine learning model and lets it do

820
00:31:01,734 --> 00:31:02,394
its thing,

821
00:31:02,695 --> 00:31:03,195
basically.

822
00:31:04,055 --> 00:31:05,035
The other,

823
00:31:05,734 --> 00:31:07,595
obvious direction would be to,

824
00:31:08,134 --> 00:31:09,119
apply our methods

825
00:31:10,319 --> 00:31:11,619
to other fields.

826
00:31:12,319 --> 00:31:14,819
Like, on the archive alone, there are

827
00:31:15,119 --> 00:31:18,880
more than 15 other primary categories beyond quantum

828
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:20,720
physics that we could try to use this

829
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:22,579
method on where the data is basically

830
00:31:23,039 --> 00:31:25,285
publicly available and on the Internet ready to

831
00:31:25,285 --> 00:31:29,224
use. This includes topics like, mathematics, computer science,

832
00:31:29,525 --> 00:31:32,505
or economics or biology where we could also

833
00:31:32,724 --> 00:31:34,884
try our method on and see if we

834
00:31:34,884 --> 00:31:38,910
can find emergent research connections in these fields.

835
00:31:40,029 --> 00:31:41,630
And Mario, what about you? What are you

836
00:31:41,630 --> 00:31:43,250
looking forward to in the future?

837
00:31:44,269 --> 00:31:47,009
Yeah. So beyond things like predicting,

838
00:31:48,349 --> 00:31:50,529
more general properties like cetaceans

839
00:31:50,990 --> 00:31:51,490
and,

840
00:31:52,029 --> 00:31:53,730
maybe surprise and so on,

841
00:31:55,204 --> 00:31:55,704
one

842
00:31:56,164 --> 00:31:59,045
could one could probably make big steps into

843
00:31:59,045 --> 00:32:01,144
improving their AI models themselves

844
00:32:01,765 --> 00:32:03,464
by performing AI competitions.

845
00:32:04,244 --> 00:32:06,265
So I think the data that Felix,

846
00:32:07,285 --> 00:32:10,005
has is very well equipped for that, where

847
00:32:10,005 --> 00:32:11,990
you would have a pool of prize money

848
00:32:11,990 --> 00:32:15,669
and then a hidden dataset, and participants need

849
00:32:15,669 --> 00:32:16,809
to provide

850
00:32:17,509 --> 00:32:18,089
the best

851
00:32:18,470 --> 00:32:21,029
models that they can come up with to

852
00:32:21,029 --> 00:32:21,529
predict

853
00:32:22,875 --> 00:32:25,994
for predict, for instance, the future of, quantum

854
00:32:25,994 --> 00:32:26,494
physics.

855
00:32:27,755 --> 00:32:30,234
And then test in that case, we could

856
00:32:30,234 --> 00:32:30,734
compete,

857
00:32:31,595 --> 00:32:34,154
techniques like knowledge craft, the techniques that we

858
00:32:34,154 --> 00:32:36,095
have published in these papers,

859
00:32:37,670 --> 00:32:39,990
with many, many other techniques that other people

860
00:32:39,990 --> 00:32:42,549
come up with. And that is, I've seen

861
00:32:42,549 --> 00:32:44,490
this, now one time,

862
00:32:45,109 --> 00:32:47,829
very clearly that this is very useful. There

863
00:32:47,829 --> 00:32:50,410
are many, many diverse techniques that usually

864
00:32:50,789 --> 00:32:51,930
be in such competition,

865
00:32:52,375 --> 00:32:54,794
techniques that you alone would never think about.

866
00:32:55,894 --> 00:32:56,394
It's

867
00:32:57,494 --> 00:32:59,034
significantly more technical,

868
00:33:00,134 --> 00:33:01,194
ideas, significantly

869
00:33:01,654 --> 00:33:03,894
simpler ideas that you would not even believe

870
00:33:03,894 --> 00:33:05,034
that they might work.

871
00:33:05,740 --> 00:33:07,579
So that would be really great. And I

872
00:33:07,579 --> 00:33:08,240
think this

873
00:33:08,700 --> 00:33:10,460
type of data that we,

874
00:33:10,940 --> 00:33:13,579
prepared here would suit very well for such

875
00:33:13,579 --> 00:33:14,400
AI competitions.

876
00:33:15,419 --> 00:33:17,119
I see. And and Mario,

877
00:33:17,579 --> 00:33:19,839
you you mentioned the journal, Machine Learning

878
00:33:20,515 --> 00:33:21,575
Science and Technology.

879
00:33:23,315 --> 00:33:25,714
Can you and you're on the editorial board

880
00:33:25,714 --> 00:33:27,255
of that journal. Can

881
00:33:27,714 --> 00:33:29,154
you just give us a little bit of

882
00:33:29,154 --> 00:33:32,134
a flavor of what sort of physics related

883
00:33:32,674 --> 00:33:34,375
research the journal publishes?

884
00:33:35,690 --> 00:33:37,630
Yes. So this is

885
00:33:38,009 --> 00:33:40,329
probably one of the most important, if not

886
00:33:40,329 --> 00:33:41,150
the most important,

887
00:33:41,769 --> 00:33:42,990
journal in that

888
00:33:43,369 --> 00:33:44,509
field. Because

889
00:33:45,049 --> 00:33:46,430
machine learning research,

890
00:33:46,890 --> 00:33:49,789
getting it published in physics journals,

891
00:33:50,204 --> 00:33:50,944
can be

892
00:33:51,325 --> 00:33:52,944
quite challenging because,

893
00:33:53,644 --> 00:33:56,684
physicists are looking at different things that we

894
00:33:56,684 --> 00:33:58,704
might look at. Also publishing

895
00:33:59,484 --> 00:33:59,984
those,

896
00:34:01,005 --> 00:34:01,505
techniques

897
00:34:01,884 --> 00:34:02,865
in AI,

898
00:34:05,799 --> 00:34:08,140
conferences might also be very challenging because

899
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:11,239
those people also look at very different things.

900
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,719
So there was before this channel, there was

901
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,719
really a gap where it's not clear how

902
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:17,954
would you even publish such works. And now

903
00:34:17,954 --> 00:34:18,595
I think,

904
00:34:19,315 --> 00:34:20,454
MLST became

905
00:34:20,914 --> 00:34:21,414
the

906
00:34:21,875 --> 00:34:22,775
the two go

907
00:34:23,155 --> 00:34:23,655
address

908
00:34:23,954 --> 00:34:24,855
for exactly,

909
00:34:25,315 --> 00:34:26,135
such works.

910
00:34:26,675 --> 00:34:29,555
And then a lot of works on how

911
00:34:29,555 --> 00:34:30,179
you would,

912
00:34:31,059 --> 00:34:31,960
use new

913
00:34:32,260 --> 00:34:34,280
ideas for machine learning in

914
00:34:34,739 --> 00:34:36,839
physics and chemistry and biology.

915
00:34:37,300 --> 00:34:39,619
Our work is a little bit, outlier because

916
00:34:39,619 --> 00:34:41,699
it even goes a step further to kind

917
00:34:41,699 --> 00:34:43,844
of meet the science, but you see that

918
00:34:44,005 --> 00:34:46,344
MLC is, quite open in,

919
00:34:46,804 --> 00:34:47,304
disrespect.

920
00:34:48,085 --> 00:34:48,585
So,

921
00:34:49,045 --> 00:34:51,364
that's why I'm super happy that the channel

922
00:34:51,364 --> 00:34:53,844
exists and also super happy that they invited

923
00:34:53,844 --> 00:34:56,984
me to join the, editorial board.

924
00:34:57,969 --> 00:35:00,849
Well, that's great. Thanks. Thanks, Felix, and Mario

925
00:35:00,849 --> 00:35:02,710
as well. Thanks for coming on the podcast

926
00:35:02,769 --> 00:35:04,769
and talking about your research. It's,

927
00:35:05,250 --> 00:35:06,070
it's a fascinating

928
00:35:06,369 --> 00:35:08,469
application of, machine learning,

929
00:35:09,170 --> 00:35:10,630
and artificial intelligence.

930
00:35:10,930 --> 00:35:14,054
And, yeah, we hope to, to learn more

931
00:35:14,054 --> 00:35:16,054
about it from you and your colleagues. Thank

932
00:35:16,054 --> 00:35:16,554
you.

933
00:35:17,094 --> 00:35:19,355
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.

934
00:35:27,730 --> 00:35:30,930
That was Felix Frohnert of the University of

935
00:35:30,930 --> 00:35:34,469
Leiden and Mario Krenn of the Max Planck

936
00:35:34,530 --> 00:35:36,710
Institute for the Science of Light.

937
00:35:37,170 --> 00:35:39,510
Thanks to both of them for a fascinating

938
00:35:39,730 --> 00:35:40,230
discussion.

939
00:35:41,195 --> 00:35:44,155
You can find their open access paper in

940
00:35:44,155 --> 00:35:44,815
the journal,

941
00:35:45,114 --> 00:35:46,175
Machine Learning,

942
00:35:46,554 --> 00:35:47,775
Science and Technology,

943
00:35:48,394 --> 00:35:51,135
which can be found on the IOP Science

944
00:35:51,195 --> 00:35:51,695
website.

945
00:35:52,394 --> 00:35:53,775
Just look for the title,

946
00:35:54,279 --> 00:35:54,779
Discovering

947
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:56,299
Emergent Connections

948
00:35:56,759 --> 00:35:58,859
in Quantum Physics Research

949
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,739
via Dynamic Word Embeddings.

950
00:36:02,679 --> 00:36:04,519
I'm afraid that's all the time we have

951
00:36:04,519 --> 00:36:05,819
for this week's podcast.

952
00:36:06,454 --> 00:36:08,375
I'll sign off with a thanks to our

953
00:36:08,375 --> 00:36:12,235
producer, Fred Ailes, and an invitation for you

954
00:36:12,375 --> 00:36:13,994
to join us next week.

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