I recently stumbled upon something called the "Supersymmetric Artificial Neural Network" or (SANN) on reddit/machine learning, which the author is to discuss at Gordon Research's next String Theory Conference in June.

With the recent proliferation of machine learning in the realm of physics (such as Katie Bouman et al's recent black hole photo powered by machine learning), I think this thread is appropriate here.

That said, from my understanding, Supersymmetry (which the SANN model above utilizes at its core) emerged in Superstring theory which unraveled a theory of both bosons and fermions in the same symmetry group.  (See this review including the SANN model above by a physics person named Mitchell Porter: Open Review : “Applications of Super-mathematics to Machine learning” )

 

In short, the difference between typical machine learning models, can be observed in a few mathematical notations:

1. Typical Deep learning model notation, as seen in the "Deep Learning Book" by Bengio et al. (Bengio is a winner of the Nobel Prize like Turing Award):

\( \phi(x;\theta)^{\top}w \) (See 'Deep Learning Book' Chapter 6, 'Deep Feedforward Networks', page 166, item 3)

2. Supersymmetric Artificial Neural Network notation, where the extra theta signifies supersymmetric directions:

\( \phi(x;\theta, \bar{{\theta}})^{\top}w \)

Could the SANN yield a practical application of String Theory?

Edited April 27, 20196 yr by choklatewolfy

I think the accepted number is 10^500 Calabi-Yau manifold shape possibilities so it would be wonderful if some machine learning technology could cut that number down by a few or preferably few hundred orders of magnitude. Is it possible without getting some sort of experimental confirmation which we won’t get due to no option of getting high enough energies in accelerators? I hope it is but being a pessimist I doubt it. I think we first need to get quantum computing to a much higher level in order to deal with the ridiculous math in string theory and other quantum gravity contenders. 

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Moderator Note

As the sock-puppet who started this thread has been banned (again), I don't think there is nay point keeping this thread open