AI has foundation models for language and vision but not physics
Anima Anandkumar · 🔬 Why Transformers Hit a Wall the Moment Physics Shows Up — Anima Anandkumar, Caltech · Aug 26, 2026 · at 1:12:57
Caltech professor Anima Anandkumar discusses the gap between language/vision foundation models and the current state of narrow surrogate physics models.
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“Because we have foundation models for language, maybe vision, but not for physics. So, you know, the idea is instead of like right now what we've seen are narrow surrogates and we're trying to broaden their scope more and more, but ideally we have much broader models that can work on a range of phenomena. But also multiphysics, so not just have, like, one single physics, but coupled physics.”
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