CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and Mistral, a European developer of large-scale AI models, have signed a statement of intent to establish a long-term strategic partnership focused on developing foundation models for scientific discovery. The partnership combines CERN's expertise in fundamental physics, scientific data and large-scale computing with Mistral's leadership in large-scale model training, aiming to advance AI for science and strengthen Europe's scientific and technological capabilities.
At the heart of the work is the ambition to develop a single pretrained Large Physics Model, the first foundation model for collider physics. It will be trained on billions of simulated proton-proton collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The model is designed to support multiple tasks, from reconstructing particle collisions and identifying particles to flagging unexpected signals and evaluating future detector designs.
Today, reconstruction relies on a chain of specialised algorithms that progressively transform detector signals into the particles used for physics analysis. Foundation models offer the potential to learn across this whole chain within a single model. CERN holds around one exabyte of experimental data from the LHC, and the number of collisions is set to increase tenfold with the HL-LHC, expected to begin operation around 2030.
"High-energy physics provides a unique environment in which artificial intelligence can be developed and tested with exceptional rigour," said Enrica Porcari, CERN's Chief Information Officer. Johannes Brandstetter, Vice-President of AI for Engineering at Mistral, added that the partnership could push the frontiers of high-energy physics and lead to new scientific discoveries.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing