Periodic Labs, backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt, aims to solve AI\u2019s dirty secret: models excel at math and code but struggle with real-world physics and chemistry.<\/p>\n
Why? They\u2019ve exhausted the internet\u2019s ~10 trillion training tokens, and the scientific literature is too noisy to learn from.<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s Chief Scientist recently admitted they have an \u201ceval deficit\u201d<\/a> and need \u201cactual discovery\u201d on real problems. Its new Applied Evals team is testing usefulness beyond benchmarks to create \u201cvibe researchers,\u201d and it is working on an automated research agent.<\/p>\n But vibe researchers need something to evaluate. That\u2019s where Periodic Labs comes in.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company is building robotic labs where AI can synthesize materials, heat them up, measure their properties, and learn from what actually happens. Real robots. Real chemicals. Real physics. As Periodic puts it<\/a>: \u201cUnless you have an experiment in the loop, we\u2019re just thinking. Until you try it, you\u2019re no further along.\u201d<\/p>\n This looks like:\u00a0Human evaluators initiate \u2192 AI agent designs experiments \u2192 Robotic labs execute them \u2192 \u201cNature\u201d itself provides a reward signal (did the experiment work?) \u2192 Data improves models.<\/p>\n Periodic\u2019s is already helping semiconductor manufacturers solve heat dissipation problems. They\u2019re starting with that focus but are eventually targeting superconductors, next-gen chips, and materials that could restart Moore\u2019s Law. This is comparable to the anti-infinite slop machine (i.e., Sora 2<\/a>)\u2026 an infinite SCIENCE machine.<\/p>\n And as Periodic<\/a> says, \u201cyou never finish science.\u201d<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note:<\/em><\/strong> This content originally ran in today\u2019s newsletter send from our sister publication, <\/em>The Neuron<\/em><\/a>. To read more from The Neuron, <\/em>sign up for its newsletter here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post AI Scientists Just Got $300M and a Robot Army<\/a> appeared first on eWEEK<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Periodic Labs, backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt, aims to solve AI\u2019s dirty secret: models excel at math and code but struggle with real-world physics and chemistry. Why? They\u2019ve exhausted the internet\u2019s ~10 trillion training tokens, and the scientific literature is too noisy to learn from. The timing is perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Connecting the dots<\/h2>\n