Smash Notes

Back to 🔬 Synthesis Superintelligence: from Semiconductors to Superconductors — Periodic Labs’ Liam Fedus and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, with Liam Fedus & Ekin Dogus Cubuk.

Why Is Materials Data Never Deleted?

Ekin Dogus Cubuk says materials data is never deleted because any measurement the team can collect is precious. A person cannot watch every atom. If every position were visible, the experiment would hold more data than a computer can store, but that full record is not available. What the instruments return is already a thin slice, so throwing a reading away means losing something the lab cannot recapture.

Brandon Anderson compares the measurement to linear probing of a foundation model. The material is the large model. The experiment is a tiny probe, about eight bits of output, and a human or an agent has to rebuild what is happening inside from that coarse reading.

Transcript

🔬 Synthesis Superintelligence: from Semiconductors to Superconductors — Periodic Labs’ Liam Fedus and Ekin Dogus Cubuk ·

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

More from this episode

  1. What Is an AI Scientist Lab?Liam Fedus says an AI scientist lab joins AI systems, simulations of the physical world, and a high-throughput experiment, because thinking alone cannot…
  2. Why Can't Reinforcement Learning Wait on a Superconductor?Liam Fedus says reinforcement learning cannot wait on a superconductor, because an update that sits for a couple of days to see whether a run found a…
  3. What Does More Is Different Mean?Brandon Anderson says Phil Anderson's line, more is different, means someone can know the basic laws and still be wrong about what happens when many parts are…
  4. What Is a Matter Compiler?Liam Fedus says a matter compiler is a lab that takes a requested material and works out a process that can make it, the way a chip fab builds a design it did…
  5. Why Can't Density Functional Theory Replace Experiments?Ekin Dogus Cubuk says density functional theory cannot replace experiments, even at a hundred million trials. The method usually simulates a perfect crystal.
  6. What Does It Mean for Lab Equipment to Have 140 IQ?Liam Fedus says lab equipment with a 140 IQ is an instrument that runs its own AI, because people checking every sample by eye cannot keep up once the lab…
  7. How Did Periodic Labs Catch a Bad Machine Load?Liam Fedus says Periodic Labs caught a bad machine load because an AI system with a full view of the lab data noticed a pattern no single run made obvious.
  8. What Is a Null Result in Materials?Liam Fedus says a null result in materials can mean the team intended to produce a structure and every measurement says they did not.
  9. Why Is There No Fast Test for Superconductivity?Ekin Dogus Cubuk says there is no fast test for superconductivity.
  10. How Does Periodic Labs Work With Semiconductor Companies?Liam Fedus says Periodic Labs works with semiconductor companies by sending its own engineers and researchers on site, into very private and secure labs, to…
  11. Why Did Alex Müller Win a Nobel Prize for Cuprates?Ekin Dogus Cubuk says Alex Müller won a Nobel Prize because cuprates worked after his nickelates did not.

People

More answers like this

More with Shawn Wang

More with Brandon Anderson

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.