AI and the World's Hard Problems · Physics · Anthropic · 2026-10-01
Claude-shaped science
Prof. Matthew Schwartz describes how, after he stopped fighting Claude and let it find problems suited to its current capabilities, he built BootLoops, a toolkit for exact calculations in quantitative science. Because similar calculations recur across fields, Claude found connections to ecology, population genetics, and a dozen other areas, though these were often technically correct but initially unremarkable. Schwartz then worked with domain experts to steer BootLoops toward questions those fields care about.