IPM Physics Colloquium

Speaker
Dr. Saeed Ansarifard
(School of physics of IPM)

Title of talk:
The Revolution in Reporting: How AI is transforming the study of nature


عنوان:
انقلاب در گزراش‌دهی: چگونه هوش مصنوعی مطالعه طبیعت را تحت تاثیر قرار می‌دهد

Date and time:
6-7:30pm, Saturday 18 July 2026 ( 27 Tir 1405)

Venue: Online

https://www.skyroom.online/ch/schoolofphysics/colloquium

Abstract:
Since the invention of writing, our understanding of nature has been built upon reports. Tracing the evolution of scientific reporting offers a unique lens through which to view the evolution of physics itself. Today, with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), we stand in the midst of a revolution that is more than a technological shift. From the passive recording of observations to computational objects that can actively drive discovery, we are witnessing a transformation in the way we study nature. In this talk, I will explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the practice of empirical sciences in its modern form and show that the next generation of experiments will undergo fundamental change. One manifestation of this transformation is the emergence of Foundation Models and self-supervised learning, in which AI systems learn structured representations directly from raw observations, rather than relying on human annotation. This shift changes not only how data are collected, presented, and analyzed, but also how observations are interpreted and transformed into knowledge. As an example, I will present Masked AutoEncoder (MAE) techniques applied to particle physics experiments, demonstrating how self-supervised learning can extract meaningful patterns without relying on extensive labeled datasets. I will then extend these concepts to cosmological observations from the Euclid mission, where similar architectures reveal latent representations.