At CERN, AI will drive future discoveries

Every second, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces 40 million particle collisions – far more data than any computer on Earth could ever store or analyse. So CERN scientists are letting AI make split-second decisions, in real time, about which of those collisions might contain the next big discovery. It’s one of many ways in which AI could transform particle physics work. As CERN plans a new, far more expensive collider to replace the LHC in the 2040s, physicists say AI won't just crunch numbers after the fact– it will help design the machine itself, choose its materials, and decide what questions it's even built to ask. When scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory discovered the Higgs Boson in 2012, it was a revolution in our understanding of the universe. The finding came after four decades of searching. And it wouldn't have been possible without machine learning algorithms, which were “something like the great-grandfather of what you now call AI,” says Maurizio ...