Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture
The a16z Show
2025/09/30
Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture
Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture

The a16z Show
2025/09/30
Shownote
Shownote
Scaling laws took us from GPT-1 to GPT-5 Pro. But in order to crack physics, we’ll need a different approach. In this episode, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha talks to Liam Fedus, former VP of post-training research and co-creator of ChatGPT at OpenAI,...
Highlights
Highlights
The pursuit of scientific breakthroughs has long been constrained by the pace of experimentation and theoretical exploration. Now, a new wave of AI-driven research is emerging—one that doesn't just analyze data but actively participates in discovery. In this conversation, two pioneers from leading AI labs unveil their vision for a system that learns not from text alone, but from the physical world itself.
Chapters
Chapters
What happens when AI learns from real experiments, not just text?
00:00Can AI truly understand quantum mechanics through physical interaction?
09:27Why general-purpose models fall short in scientific discovery
17:59The moonshot goal: cracking high-temperature superconductivity
24:19Bridging the gap between AI researchers and physical scientists
30:40How to teach AI new science without starting from scratch
42:14Why geometry might be the missing key to AI-powered physics
48:36Transcript
Transcript
Liam Fedus: ultimately, science is driven against experiment in the real world. And so that's what we're doing with Periodic Labs. We're taking these precursor technologies. And we're saying, okay, if you care about advancing science, we need to have exper...