How everyday foam reveals the secret logic of artificial intelligence

Modern research from the University of Pennsylvania challenges the long-held belief that foams behave like glass, revealing that foam bubbles remain in constant motion.
The interior dynamics of foams, which maintain an overall structure despite the constant movement of bubbles, closely mirror the mathematics and self-adjusting properties of deep learning in AI systems.
The discovery suggests that learning, in its broad mathematical sense, may unify physical, biological, and computational systems.
The study indicates that bubble movement within foams does not stabilize in low-energy states but persists in wide regions with multiple viable configurations, similar to the learning processes in AI.
This ongoing reorganization in foams highlights potential new ways to design adaptive and responsive materials and may offer insights into the continual reorganization seen in living systems, like cellular cytoskeletons.
The findings open new interdisciplinary avenues for research, including exploring how the mathematics of deep learning could apply beyond AI, potentially guiding advances in materials science and biology.
The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania with support from the National Science Foundation.