Teaching Physics to AI Can Allow It To Make New Discoveries All on Its Own

Duke University researchers have discovered that machine learning algorithms can gain new degrees of transparency and insight into the properties of materials after teaching them known physics. According to researchers at Duke University, incorporating known physics into machine learning algorithms can help the enigmatic black boxes attain new levels of transparency and insight into the characteristics of materials. Researchers used a sophisticated machine learning algorithm in one of the first efforts of its type to identify the characteristics of a class of engineered materials known as metamaterials and to predict how they interact with electromagnetic fields. The algorithm was essentially forced to show its work since it first had to take into account the known physical restrictions of the metamaterial. The method not only enabled the algorithm to predict the properties of the metamaterial with high accuracy, but it also did it more quickly and with additional insights than earlier approaches.