What if an AI system could propose a recipe for a new material that conducts electricity with zero resistance at room temperature—a holy grail for quantum computing and next-generation power grids?
That’s the promise researchers are edging toward with new tools that connect large language models to the laws of physics, ensuring their suggestions don’t just look plausible in prose but actually hold up in the lab.
At MIT, scientists have introduced SCIGEN, a framework designed to steer generative AI toward designing materials with exotic properties. The system can propose candidate compounds that might, for example, exhibit topological phases, unusual magnetic behavior, or superconductivity at higher temperatures than today’s known materials. Unlike conventional AI approaches that often hallucinate impossible molecules, SCIGEN integrates physics and chemistry priors to keep generation grounded in reality.
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