People have always looked for patterns to explain the universe and to predict the future. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning” is an adage predicting the weather.
AI is very good at seeing patterns and making predictions. Now, Microsoft researchers are working to apply “foundation models” – large-scale models that take advantage of recent AI advances – to scientific disciplines. These models are trained on a wide variety of data and can excel at many tasks, in contrast to more specialized models.