Artificial intelligence called in to tackle LHC data deluge

Particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider produce huge amounts of data, which algorithms are well placed to process. The next generation of particle-collider experiments will feature some of the world's most advanced thinking machines, if links now being forged between particle physicists and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers take off. Such machines could make discoveries with little human input -- a prospect that makes some physicists queasy. Driven by an eagerness to make discoveries and the knowledge that they will be hit with unmanageable volumes of data in ten years' time, physicists who work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland, are enlisting the help of AI experts. On 9–13 November, leading lights from both communities attended a workshop -- the first of its kind -- at which they discussed how advanced AI techniques could speed discoveries at the LHC. Particle physicists have "realized that they cannot do it alone", says Cécile Germain, a computer scientist at the University of Paris South in Orsay, who spoke at the workshop at CERN, the particle-physics lab that hosts the LHC.