An unlikely contributor has entered the world of high-energy theoretical physics: ChatGPT.

For decades, physicists believed that a particular interaction involving gluons – the massless particles that carry the strong nuclear force – could never occur. Now, researchers say OpenAI’s latest public model, ChatGPT-5.2 Pro, helped demonstrate that the process is in fact possible, deep within the complex internal structure of protons and neutrons.

The findings were presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), which publishes Science.

“The ideas are not revolutionary,” said Zvi Bern of the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCLA. “But what is revolutionary is that a machine can do this.”

A 40-Year Puzzle

Gluons bind quarks together to form protons and neutrons, and also bind protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei. The mathematics describing their interactions, known as scattering amplitudes, is notoriously complex.

In simple gluon collisions, physicists long believed that at least two particles had to possess negative helicity (a type of spin orientation). If only one gluon had negative helicity, the scattering amplitude was assumed to be zero , meaning the interaction could not happen.

About a year ago, three theorists identified a loophole: a single negative-helicity gluon might interact with positive-helicity gluons if all particles were traveling in roughly the same direction. Proving it, however, required navigating pages of unwieldy equations.

Andrew Strominger of Harvard University and his collaborators initially thought the calculation would take weeks. Instead, it stretched on for months. Alfredo Guevara of the Institute for Advanced Study eventually discovered a pattern in the equations, but generalizing the result for any number of gluons produced an expression dozens of terms long – too cumbersome to use.

The team suspected a clean, elegant formula was hidden inside the mess. They just couldn’t extract it.

Enter ChatGPT

At the same time, Alex Lupsasca of Vanderbilt University had joined OpenAI’s newly launched OpenAI for Science initiative. After reconnecting with Strominger, his former adviser, he suggested using ChatGPT as a test case.

The researchers fed the complex four-gluon expression into ChatGPT-5.2 Pro. Within about 20 minutes, the model simplified it. They repeated the process for five gluons, then six. In one case, the AI reduced a 32-term expression into a compact product spanning a single line.

Finally, they asked it to generalize the formula for any number of gluons. The system responded within minutes with what it described as an “obvious” generalized expression.

Concerned about possible hallucinations, the team rigorously checked the result. They found no errors.

“All of a sudden, I felt like my machine turned from a machine into a live being,” Strominger said.

To further validate the result, the team submitted the generalized formula to an internal OpenAI research model under development, nicknamed “SuperChat.” After roughly 12 hours of processing, the internal model produced a detailed proof that passed human scrutiny.

A Paradigm Shift?

The paper, posted to arXiv on 12 February, quickly gained attention online and sparked surprise at the AAAS meeting.

“What the OpenAI agent was able to do is impressive,” said Aida El-Khadra of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The researchers believe the development could mark a turning point in how theoretical physics is conducted. Guevara suggested AI might soon become as integral to physics as it has to programming – handling routine derivations, checking errors, and accelerating research workflows.

The broader physics community has responded with cautious optimism. While many see AI as a powerful assistant for verification, drafting, and cross-disciplinary synthesis, concerns remain about transparency, training of graduate students, and overreliance on automated systems.

Still, few believe scientists are at risk of being replaced.

“None of this feels to me like scientists will be replaced,” El-Khadra said.

Lupsasca is already looking ahead. He hopes similar techniques could be applied to gravitons – hypothetical quantum particles that mediate gravity – and perhaps even help tackle one of physics’ greatest unsolved problems: reconciling quantum mechanics with gravity.

For now, the result stands as a striking milestone: after 40 years of near-intractable algebra, a large language model helped physicists uncover an elegant formula describing interactions among fundamental massless particles and proved that AI can meaningfully contribute to front-line theoretical research.

AI & Machine Learning, News, Research & Innovation

Samsung Electronics has officially unveiled the Galaxy S26 series, introducing what it calls its most proactive and adaptive Galaxy AI experiences yet. The new lineup – Galaxy S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra – is designed to simplify everyday tasks by handling complex processes in the background, allowing users to focus on results rather than the technology itself.

As Samsung’s third-generation AI smartphones, the Galaxy S26 devices aim to reduce friction across common activities, from planning schedules and searching for information to capturing and refining content.

Performance Built for AI

The Galaxy S26 series is powered by Samsung’s most advanced hardware platform to date, led by the customised Snapdragon® 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform for Galaxy in the S26 Ultra.

Samsung says the Ultra delivers:

• Up to 19% faster CPU performance
• A 39% improvement in NPU performance for always-on Galaxy AI features
• A 24% GPU boost for smoother visuals and gameplay

To sustain performance, the S26 Ultra introduces a redesigned vapor chamber and enhanced thermal interface materials for better heat dissipation during gaming, multitasking, and video capture. Super-Fast Charging 3.0 enables up to 75% battery in around 30 minutes.

Samsung’s proprietary ProScaler and upgraded mobile Digital Natural Image engine (mDNIe) further enhance display sharpness, colour accuracy, and image clarity.

Industry-First Built-In Privacy Display

A standout feature of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the mobile industry’s first built-in Privacy Display. Unlike traditional stick-on privacy films, Samsung’s integrated solution dynamically limits side-angle visibility while maintaining full brightness and clarity for the user.

Privacy Display can automatically activate when entering PINs, opening selected apps, or viewing sensitive content. Users can also enable Partial Screen Privacy for notifications or Maximum Privacy Protection for enhanced discretion.

This hardware-level privacy feature reinforces Samsung’s broader security strategy, which includes Samsung Knox, Knox Vault, post-quantum cryptography protections, and expanded AI-driven Privacy Alerts.

Galaxy’s Most Advanced Camera System

The Galaxy S26 series also introduces Samsung’s most advanced camera system to date.

On the S26 Ultra:

• Wider apertures improve low-light photography
• Enhanced Nightography Video keeps footage vibrant in dim environments
• Upgraded Super Steady adds horizontal lock for stable framing
• Support for APV, a new professional-grade video codec for high-quality compression

AI enhancements now extend to the selfie camera through an improved AI ISP, delivering more natural skin tones in mixed lighting.

Editing tools have also been expanded. The upgraded Photo Assist suite allows users to describe edits in natural language – such as changing a scene from day to night, restoring missing objects, or even modifying outfits in photos. Creative Studio centralises design tools for generating stickers, wallpapers, and invitations from sketches or prompts.

More Proactive Galaxy AI

Galaxy AI on the S26 series becomes more context-aware and anticipatory.

Features include:

• Now Nudge, which suggests relevant content – such as surfacing trip photos when a friend asks for them
• A more personalised Now Brief widget
• Enhanced Circle to Search with Google, now supporting multi-object recognition
• Integration with Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity agents for natural, multi-step task completion
• Users can request actions like booking a ride or coordinating across apps with a single voice prompt, as AI agents handle the process in the background.

Security for the AI Era

As AI becomes more deeply embedded into mobile workflows, Samsung is emphasising layered protection. The Galaxy S26 series includes:

• AI-powered Call Screening
• Real-time Privacy Alerts for sensitive data access
• Private Album within Gallery
• PQC-enabled encryption for eSIM transfers via Knox Matrix
• Seven years of security updates

Samsung says these features combine hardware-level and software-based safeguards to provide transparency and control over how personal data is used.

Availability

The Galaxy S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra will be available for pre-order from 26 February to 19 March 2026. Recommended retail pricing starts at:

• Galaxy S26 Ultra 256GB: R30,999
• Galaxy S26+ 256GB: R25,999
• Galaxy S26 256GB: R20,999

The series will be offered in Cobalt Violet, White, Black, and Sky Blue.

With the Galaxy S26 lineup, Samsung is positioning AI not as a feature users activate, but as an invisible system that works proactively in the background – marking its most ambitious step yet toward agentic, privacy-aware mobile computing.

AI & Machine Learning, Consumer Tech, News

Andrej Karpathy says programming has undergone a dramatic shift in just the past two months: not gradual progress, but a clear inflection point.

In a post on X, Karpathy argued that coding agents “basically didn’t work before December and basically work since.” According to him, recent model improvements in quality, long-term coherence, and persistence have made AI agents capable of powering through complex, multi-step tasks — far beyond what was possible only months ago.

A 30-Minute Weekend Project

Karpathy shared a personal example: over a weekend, he set up a local video analysis dashboard for his home cameras by giving an AI agent a single detailed instruction in plain English. The request included logging into his DGX Spark machine, configuring SSH keys, setting up vLLM, downloading and benchmarking Qwen3-VL, building a server endpoint for video inference, creating a web UI dashboard, testing everything, configuring systemd services, and generating a markdown report.

The agent reportedly worked autonomously for around 30 minutes, troubleshooting errors, researching solutions, writing and debugging code, deploying services, and returned with a completed system and documentation. Karpathy said he “didn’t touch anything.”

Just three months ago, he noted, the same work could have taken an entire weekend.

From Typing Code to Orchestrating Agents

Karpathy argues that programming is becoming “unrecognizable.” Instead of writing code line by line in an editor, the default workflow since the invention of computers , developers are increasingly spinning up AI agents, assigning tasks in natural language, and reviewing outputs.

The leverage, he says, comes from building higher-level orchestration systems: long-running agents equipped with tools, memory, and structured instructions that manage multiple coding instances in parallel. He describes this as “agentic engineering,” where the biggest opportunity lies in mastering abstraction layers and task decomposition.

Not Magic, But Disruptive

Karpathy is clear that the systems are not perfect. They require high-level direction, oversight, judgment, and iteration. They perform best on well-specified tasks with clear verification criteria. The skill, he suggests, is learning how to break problems into components that can be reliably delegated to agents while managing the edge cases.

Still, his conclusion is unequivocal: this is not business as usual in software development. And his view is increasingly echoed across the industry – for example, Spotify recently said its best developers haven’t written code in months thanks to generative AI tools, instead focusing on directing and reviewing AI-generated output as the company accelerates product development with internal systems and large language models.

If his assessment proves accurate, the role of the software engineer may be shifting from code writer to task architect,  from syntax to strategy, at a pace far faster than most anticipated.

AI & Machine Learning, News