Scooped by a Machine: Claude Computes N=4 Super Yang-Mills to Nine Loops
KyleCranmer · x · 2026-09-26
Physicist Kyle Cranmer revealed his team was scooped by Anthropic: after science writer Matt von Hippel challenged AI labs on a hard problem from his former field, Claude pushed N=4 super Yang-Mills amplitudes to nine loops within a month.
- von Hippel chose this deliberately computation-heavy problem as a test LLMs weren't expected to pass
- Collaborator Lance Dixon verified the result under NDA and wrote an addendum, "How does it feel to be scooped by a machine?"
- Cranmer: "still processing, but not entirely surprised" — his team lacked the time and resources to commit
- A landmark AI-for-science moment: a frontier model outpaced an academic team on a grueling theoretical physics calculation
Related event: Claude Breaks Nine-Loop Physics Record, Scooping Human Team(27 posts)→
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