SAVE the DATE! Wednesday 9 December 2026 at 2:00PM, ICTP Colloquium by Giulio Biroli

[Infopoint]

Dear All,

You are most cordially invited to the *ICTP Colloquium "Generative AI 
and Diffusion Models: A Statistical Physics Perspective"* by* Giulio 
Biroli *from École Normale Supérieure, Paris.

The Colloquium will take place on *Wednesday 9 December 2026 in the 
Budinich Lecture Hall at ICTP at 2:00PM** CET. * Light refreshments will 
be served at end of the event in the Leonardo Building entrance hall.

Generative AI represents a groundbreaking development within the broader 
“Machine Learning Revolution,” significantly influencing technology, 
science, and society. In this talk, Prof. Giulio Biroli will focus on 
remarkable connections between generative AI, in particular diffusion 
models, and statistical physics. Diffusion models are the state of the 
art to generate images, videos, and sounds. They are very fascinating 
algorithms for physicists, as they are very much connected to concepts 
from stochastic thermodynamics, particularly time-reversed Langevin 
dynamics. These diffusion models start from a simple white noise input 
and make it evolve through a Langevin process to generate complex 
outputs such as images, videos, and sounds. Prof. Biroli will show that 
statistical physics provides principles and methods to characterise this 
generation process. The emergence of features can be understood through 
the lens of symmetry breaking and dynamical phase transitions, whereas 
the emergence of creativity - or its absence (memorisation) - can be 
explained using  theories of disordered systems, and dynamics in complex 
energy landscapes.  Prof. Biroli will conclude by discussing the 
fundamental reasons behind the success of diffusion models compared to 
earlier generative methods, highlighting a deep connection between their 
multi-scale generation mechanism and the renormalisation group analysis 
of physical systems.

_About the speaker_
Giulio Biroli is professor of theoretical physics at the École Normale 
Supérieure in Paris.
 From 2002 to 2018 he held a researcher position at the Institute for 
Theoretical Physics (CEA) Giulio Biroli has a long-standing interest in 
slow dynamics of classical and quantum systems, in disordered and glassy 
systems and in inter-disciplinary applications of statistical physics 
ranging from computer science, probability theory, and theoretical 
ecology. In recent years, part of his research has been devoted to the 
theory of machine learning leveraging ideas and methods rooted in 
statistical physics.

The event will be livetreamed at:
http://ictp.it/livestream

For info, please check the following link: 
https://indico.ictp.it/event/11552/

Looking forward to your participation.

With best regards,

Director's Office, ICTP
www.ictp.it

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