Special CMX Seminar

As John Hopfield eloquently stated in his Nobel lecture, "Physics is not subject matter, but a point of view." Physicists are renowned for their boldness in simplifying complex systems-modelling even a cow as a "spherical cow in a vacuum" when other details are irrelevant. While such abstractions may appear overly simplistic, this approach has proven instrumental in unraveling many mysteries of deep learning. In this talk, I will explore how "spherical cow" models can illuminate phenomena such as grokking, neural scaling laws, and emergent skills. Furthermore, I will discuss how these models can offer valuable insights into designing more efficient next-generation AI systems.