DeepMind open-sources the FermiNet, a neural network that simulates electron behaviors

In September, Alphabet's DeepMind published a paper in the journal Physical Review Research detailing Fermionic Neural Network (FermiNet), a new neural network architecture that's well-suited to modeling the quantum state of large collections of electrons. The FermiNet, which DeepMind claims is one of the first demonstrations of AI for computing atomic energy, is now available in open source on GitHub -- and ostensibly remains one of the most accurate methods to date. In quantum systems, particles like electrons don't have exact locations. Their positions are instead described by a probability cloud. Representing the state of a quantum system is challenging, because probabilities have to be assigned to possible configurations of electron positions. These are encoded in the wavefunction, which assigns a positive or negative number to every configuration of electrons; the wavefunction squared gives the probability of finding the system in that configuration.