Jared Kaplan, co-founder of Anthropic and former theoretical physicist, has made a striking prediction: there’s a 50% chance that theoretical physicists will mostly be replaced by AI within two to three years. His forecast suggests that AI systems will soon generate papers rivaling the work of luminaries like Nima Arkani-Hamed and Ed Witten—essentially autonomously. “I would give like a 50% chance that in two or three years, theoretical physicists will mostly be replaced with AI,” Kaplan said in an interview. Will theoretical physics truly be automated within 2-3 years, or will the field prove more resistant to AI disruption than anticipated? For now, theoretical physicists have at least a couple of years.