AI Came for Math. Now It’s Chasing the Rest of Science

Last week, I attended a talk at MIT by Neil Thompson, who studies progress in computing and artificial intelligence. Over the course of just half an hour, Thompson made a convincing case that several scientific fields are about to be upended by AI.

As mathematicians reel from the way AI is automating their field, Thompson’s latest study suggests that probability, statistics theory, economic theory, high-energy theory, gravitation and cosmology, and quantum physics may be next, thanks to the rapidly evolving capabilities of frontier models. Between mid-2024 and mid-2026, the study shows, the best AI models went from being able to correctly solve about 2 percent of theoretical problems in these fields to about 35 percent of such problems. And there are no signs that this progress will slow down.