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Essential Review Papers on Physics-Informed Neural Networks: A Curated Guide for Practitioners

Staying on top of a fast-growing research field is never easy. I face this challenge firsthand as a practitioner in Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). New papers, be they algorithmic advancements or cutting-edge applications, are published at an accelerating pace by both academia and industry. While it is exciting to see this rapid development, it inevitably raises a pressing question: How can one stay informed without spending countless hours sifting through papers? This is where I have found review papers to be exceptionally valuable. Good review papers are effective tools that distill essential insights and highlight important trends. They are big-time savers guiding us through the flood of information. In this blog post, I would like to share with you my personal, curated list of must-read review papers on PINNs, that are especially influential for my own understanding and use of PINNs. Those papers cover key aspects of PINNs, including algorithmic developments, implementation best practices, and real-world applications. In addition to what’s available in existing literature, I’ve included one of my own review papers, which provides a comprehensive analysis of common functional usage patterns of PINNs — a practical perspective often missing from academic reviews. This analysis is based on my review of around 200 arXiv papers on PINNs across various engineering domains in the past 3 years and can serve as an essential guide for practitioners looking to deploy these techniques to tackle real-world challenges. For each review paper, I will explain why it deserves your attention by explaining its unique perspective and indicating practical takeaways that you can benefit from immediately. Whether you’re just getting started with PINNs, using them to tackle real-world problems, or exploring new research directions, I hope this collection makes navigating the busy field of PINN research easier for you. Let’s cut through the complexity together and focus on what truly matters. 1️⃣ Scientific Machine Learning through Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Where we are and what’s next 📄 Paper at a glance 🔍 What it covers Authors: S. Cuomo, V. Schiano di Cola, F. Giampaolo, G. Rozza, M. Raissi, and F. Piccialli Year: 2022 Link: arXiv This review is structured around key themes in PINNs: the fundamental components that define their architecture, theoretical aspects of their learning process, and their application to various computing challenges in engineering. The paper also explores the available toolsets, emerging trends, and future directions. Fig 1. Overview of the #1 review paper. (Image by author) ✨ What’s unique This review paper stands out in the following ways: One of the best introductions to PINN fundamentals. This paper takes a well-paced approach to explaining PINNs from the ground up. Section 2 systematically dissects the building blocks of a PINN, covering various underlying neural network architectures and their associated characteristics, how PDE constraints are incorporated, common training methodologies, and learning theory (convergence, error analysis, etc.) of PINNs. Putting PINNs in historical context. Rather than simply presenting PINNs as a standalone solution, the paper traces their development from earlier work on using deep learning to solve differential equations. This historical framing is valuable because it helps demystify PINNs by showing that they are an evolution of previous ideas, and it makes it easier for practitioners to see what alternatives are available. Equation-driven organization. Instead of just classifying PINN research by scientific domains (e.g., geoscience, material science, etc.) as many other reviews do, this paper categorizes PINNs based on the types of differential equations (e.g., diffusion problems, advection problems, etc.) they solve. This equation-first perspective encourages knowledge transfer as the same set of PDEs could be used across multiple scientific domains. In addition, it makes it easier for practitioners to see the strengths and weaknesses of PINNs when dealing with different types of differential equations. 🛠 Practical goodies Beyond its theoretical insights, this review paper offers immediately useful resources for practitioners: A complete implementation example. In section 3.4, this paper walks through a full PINN implementation to solve a 1D Nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It covers translating equations into PINN formulations, handling boundary and initial conditions, defining neural network architectures, choosing training strategies, selecting collocation points, and applying optimization methods. All implementation details are clearly documented for easy reproducibility. The paper compares PINN performance by varying different hyperparameters, which could offer immediately applicable insights for your own PINN experiments. Available frameworks and software tools. Table 3 compiles a comprehensive list of major PINN toolkits, with detailed tool descriptions provided in section 4.3. The considered backends include not only Tensorflow and PyTorch but also Julia and Jax. This side-by-side comparison of different frameworks is especially useful for picking the right tool for your needs. 💡Who would benefit This review paper benefits anyone new to PINNs and looking for a clear, structured introduction. Engineers and developers looking for practical implementation guidance would find the realistic, hands-on demo, and the thorough comparison of existing PINN frameworks most interesting. Additionally, they can find relevant prior work on differential equations similar to their current problem, which offers insights they can leverage in their own problem-solving. Researchers investigating theoretical aspects of PINN convergence, optimization, or efficiency can also greatly benefit from this paper. 2️⃣ From PINNs to PIKANs: Recent Advances in Physics-Informed Machine Learning 📄 Paper at a glance Authors: J. D. Toscano, V. Oommen, A. J. Varghese, Z. Zou, N. A. Daryakenari, C. Wu, and G. E. Karniadakis Year: 2024 Link: arXiv 🔍 What it covers This paper provides one of the most up-to-date overviews of the latest advancements in PINNs. It emphasises enhancements in network design, feature expansion, optimization strategies, uncertainty quantification, and theoretical insights. The paper also surveys key applications across a range of domains. Fig 2. Overview of the #2 review paper. (Image by author) ✨ What’s unique This review paper stands out in the following ways: A structured taxonomy of algorithmic developments. One of the most fresh contributions of this paper is its taxonomy of algorithmic advancements. This new taxonomy scheme elegantly categorizes all the advancements into three core areas: (1) representation model, (2) handling governing equations, and (3) optimization process. This structure provides a clear framework for understanding both current developments and potential directions for future research. In addition, the illustrations used in the paper are top-notch and easily digestible. Fig 3. The taxonomy of algorithmic developments in PINNs proposed by the #2 paper. (Image by author) Spotlight on Physics-informed Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KAN). KAN, a new architecture based on the Kolmogorov–Arnold representation theorem, is currently a hot topic in deep learning. In the PINN community, some work has already been done to replace the multilayer perceptions (MLP) representation with KANs to gain more expressiveness and training efficiency. The community lacks a comprehensive review of this new line of research. This review paper (section 3.1) exactly fills in the gap. Review on uncertainty quantification (UQ) in PINNs. UQ is essential for the reliable and trustworthy deployment of PINNs when tackling real-world engineering applications. In section 5, this paper provides a dedicated section on UQ, explaining the common sources of uncertainty in solving differential equations with PINNs and reviewing strategies for quantifying prediction confidence. Theoretical advances in PINN training dynamics. In practice, training PINNs is non-trivial. Practitioners are often puzzled by why PINNs training sometimes fail, or how they should be trained optimally. In section 6.2, this paper provides one of the most detailed and up-to-date discussions on this aspect, covering the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) analysis of PINNs, information bottleneck theory, and multi-objective optimization challenges. 🛠 Practical goodies Even though this review paper leans towards the theory-heavy side, two particularly valuable aspects stand out from a practical perspective: A timeline of algorithmic advances in PINNs. In Appendix A Table, this paper tracks the milestones of key advancements in PINNs, from the original PINN formulation to the most recent extensions to KANs. If you’re working on algorithmic improvements, this timeline gives you a clear view of what’s already been done. If you’re struggling with PINN training or accuracy, you can use this table to find existing methods that might solve your issue. A broad overview of PINN applications across domains. Compared to all the other reviews, this paper strives to give the most comprehensive and updated coverage of PINN applications in not only the engineering domains but also other less-covered fields such as finance. Practitioners can easily find prior works conducted in their domains and draw inspiration. 💡Who would benefit For practitioners working in safety-critical fields that need confidence intervals or reliability estimates on their PINN predictions, the discussion on UQ would be useful. If you are struggling with PINN training instability, slow convergence, or unexpected failures, the discussion on PINN training dynamics can help unpack the theoretical reasons behind these issues. Researchers may find this paper especially interesting because of the new taxonomy, which allows them to see patterns and identify gaps and opportunities for novel contributions. In addition, the review of cutting-edge work on PI-KAN can also be inspiring. 3️⃣ Physics-Informed Neural Networks: An Application-Centric Guide 📄 Paper at a glance Authors: S. Guo (this author) Year: 2024 Link: Medium 🔍 What it covers This article reviews how PINNs are used to tackle different types of engineering tasks. For each task category, the article discusses the problem statement, why PINNs are useful, how PINNs can be implemented to address the problem, and is followed by a concrete use case published in the literature. Fig 4. Overview of the #3 review paper. (Image by author) ✨ What’s unique Unlike most reviews that categorize PINN applications either based on the type of differential equations solved or specific engineering domains, this article picks an angle that practitioners care about the most: the engineering tasks solved by PINNs. This work is based on reviewing papers on PINN case studies scattered in various engineering domains. The outcome is a list of distilled recurring functional usage patterns of PINNs: Predictive modeling and simulations, where PINNs are leveraged for dynamical system forecasting, coupled system modeling, and surrogate modeling. Optimization, where PINNs are commonly employed to achieve efficient design optimization, inverse design, model predictive control, and optimized sensor placement. Data-driven insights, where PINNs are used to identify the unknown parameters or functional forms of the system, as well as to assimilate observational data to better estimate the system states. Data-driven enhancement, where PINNs are used to reconstruct the field and enhance the resolution of the observational data. Monitoring, diagnostic, and health assessment, where PINNs are leveraged to act as virtual sensors, anomaly detectors, health monitors, and predictive maintainers. 🛠 Practical goodies This article places practitioners’ needs at the forefront. While most existing review papers merely answer the question, “Has PINN been used in my field?”, practitioners often seek more specific guidance: “Has PINN been used for the type of problem I’m trying to solve?”. This is precisely what this article tries to address. By using the proposed five-category functional classification, practitioners can conveniently map their problems to these categories, see how others have solved them, and what worked and what did not. Instead of reinventing the wheel, practitioners can leverage established use cases and adapt proven solutions to their own problems. 💡Who would benefit This review is best for practitioners who want to see how PINNs are actually being used in the real world. It can also be particularly valuable for cross-disciplinary innovation, as practitioners can learn from solutions developed in other fields. 4️⃣ An Expert’s Guide to Training Physics-informed Neural Networks 📄 Paper at a glance Authors: S. Wang, S. Sankaran, H. Wang, P. Perdikaris Year: 2023 Link: arXiv 🔍 What it covers Even though it doesn’t market itself as a “standard” review, this paper goes all in on providing a comprehensive handbook for training PINNs. It presents a detailed set of best practices for training physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), addressing issues like spectral bias, unbalanced loss terms, and causality violations. It also introduces challenging benchmarks and extensive ablation studies to demonstrate these methods. Fig 5. Overview of the #4 review paper. (Image by author) ✨ What’s unique A unified “expert’s guide”. The main authors are active researchers in PINNs, working extensively on improving PINN training efficiency and model accuracy for the past years. This paper is a distilled summary of the authors’ past work, synthesizing a broad range of recent PINN techniques (e.g., Fourier feature embeddings, adaptive loss weighting, causal training) into a cohesive training pipeline. This feels like having a mentor who tells you exactly what does and doesn’t work with PINNs. A thorough hyperparameter tuning study. This paper conducts various experiments to show how different tweaks (e.g., different architectures, training schemes, etc.) play out on different PDE tasks. Their ablation studies show precisely which methods move the needle, and by how much. PDE benchmarks. The paper compiles a suite of challenging PDE benchmarks and offers state-of-the-art results that PINNs can achieve. 🛠 Practical goodies A problem-solution cheat sheet. This paper thoroughly documents various techniques addressing common PINN training pain-points. Each technique is clearly presented using a structured format: the why (motivation), how (how the approach addresses the problem), and what (the implementation details). This makes it very easy for practitioners to identify the “cure” based on the “symptoms” observed in their PINN training process. What’s great is that the authors transparently discussed potential pitfalls of each approach, allowing practitioners to make well-informed decisions and effective trade-offs. Empirical insights. The paper shares valuable empirical insights obtained from extensive hyperparameter tuning experiments. It offers practical guidance on choosing suitable hyperparameters, e.g., network architectures and learning rate schedules, and demonstrates how these parameters interact with the advanced PINN training techniques proposed. Ready-to-use library. The paper is accompanied by an optimized JAX library that practitioners can directly adopt or customize. The library supports multi-GPU environments and is ready for scaling to large-scale problems. 💡Who would benefit Practitioners who are struggling with unstable or slow PINN training can find many practical strategies to fix common pathologies. They can also benefit from the straightforward templates (in JAX) to quickly adapt PINNs to their own PDE setups. Researchers looking for challenging benchmark problems and aiming to benchmark new PINN ideas against well-documented baselines will find this paper especially handy. 5️⃣ Domain-Specific Review Papers Beyond general reviews in PINNs, there are several nice review papers that focus on specific scientific and engineering domains. If you’re working in one of these fields, these reviews could provide a deeper dive into best practices and cutting-edge applications. 1. Heat Transfer Problems Paper: Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Heat Transfer Problems The paper provides an application-centric discussion on how PINNs can be used to tackle various thermal engineering problems, including inverse heat transfer, convection-dominated flows, and phase-change modeling. It highlights real-world challenges such as missing boundary conditions, sensor-driven inverse problems, and adaptive cooling system design. The industrial case study related to power electronics is particularly insightful for understanding the usage of PINNs in practice. 2. Power Systems Paper: Applications of Physics-Informed Neural Networks in Power Systems — A Review This paper offers a structured overview of how PINNs are applied to critical power grid challenges, including state/parameter estimation, dynamic analysis, power flow calculation, optimal power flow (OPF), anomaly detection, and model synthesis. For each type of application, the paper discusses the shortcomings of traditional power system solutions and explains why PINNs could be advantageous in addressing those shortcomings. This comparative summary is useful for understanding the motivation for adopting PINNs. 3. Fluid Mechanics Paper: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for fluid mechanics: A review This paper explored three detailed case studies that demonstrate PINNs application in fluid dynamics: (1) 3D wake flow reconstruction using sparse 2D velocity data, (2) inverse problems in compressible flow (e.g., shock wave prediction with minimal boundary data), and (3) biomedical flow modeling, where PINNs infer thrombus material properties from phase-field data. The paper highlights how PINNs overcome limitations in traditional CFD, e.g., mesh dependency, expensive data assimilation, and difficulty handling ill-posed inverse problems. 4. Additive Manufacturing Paper: A review on physics-informed machine learning for monitoring metal additive manufacturing process This paper examines how PINNs address critical challenges specific to additive manufacturing process prediction or monitoring, including temperature field prediction, fluid dynamics modeling, fatigue life estimation, accelerated finite element simulations, and process characteristics prediction. 6️⃣ Conclusion In this blog post, we went through a curated list of review papers on PINNs, covering fundamental theoretical insights, the latest algorithmic advancements, and practical application-oriented perspectives. For each paper, we highlighted unique contributions, key takeaways, and the audience that would benefit the most from these insights. I hope this curated collection can help you better navigate the evolving field of PINNs.

Staying on top of a fast-growing research field is never easy.

I face this challenge firsthand as a practitioner in Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). New papers, be they algorithmic advancements or cutting-edge applications, are published at an accelerating pace by both academia and industry. While it is exciting to see this rapid development, it inevitably raises a pressing question:

How can one stay informed without spending countless hours sifting through papers?

This is where I have found review papers to be exceptionally valuable. Good review papers are effective tools that distill essential insights and highlight important trends. They are big-time savers guiding us through the flood of information.

In this blog post, I would like to share with you my personal, curated list of must-read review papers on PINNs, that are especially influential for my own understanding and use of PINNs. Those papers cover key aspects of PINNs, including algorithmic developments, implementation best practices, and real-world applications.

In addition to what’s available in existing literature, I’ve included one of my own review papers, which provides a comprehensive analysis of common functional usage patterns of PINNs — a practical perspective often missing from academic reviews. This analysis is based on my review of around 200 arXiv papers on PINNs across various engineering domains in the past 3 years and can serve as an essential guide for practitioners looking to deploy these techniques to tackle real-world challenges.

For each review paper, I will explain why it deserves your attention by explaining its unique perspective and indicating practical takeaways that you can benefit from immediately.

Whether you’re just getting started with PINNs, using them to tackle real-world problems, or exploring new research directions, I hope this collection makes navigating the busy field of PINN research easier for you.

Let’s cut through the complexity together and focus on what truly matters.

1️⃣ Scientific Machine Learning through Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Where we are and what’s next

📄 Paper at a glance

🔍 What it covers

  • Authors: S. Cuomo, V. Schiano di Cola, F. Giampaolo, G. Rozza, M. Raissi, and F. Piccialli
  • Year: 2022
  • Link: arXiv

This review is structured around key themes in PINNs: the fundamental components that define their architecture, theoretical aspects of their learning process, and their application to various computing challenges in engineering. The paper also explores the available toolsets, emerging trends, and future directions.

Fig 1. Overview of the #1 review paper. (Image by author)

✨ What’s unique

This review paper stands out in the following ways:

  • One of the best introductions to PINN fundamentals. This paper takes a well-paced approach to explaining PINNs from the ground up. Section 2 systematically dissects the building blocks of a PINN, covering various underlying neural network architectures and their associated characteristics, how PDE constraints are incorporated, common training methodologies, and learning theory (convergence, error analysis, etc.) of PINNs.
  • Putting PINNs in historical context. Rather than simply presenting PINNs as a standalone solution, the paper traces their development from earlier work on using deep learning to solve differential equations. This historical framing is valuable because it helps demystify PINNs by showing that they are an evolution of previous ideas, and it makes it easier for practitioners to see what alternatives are available.
  • Equation-driven organization. Instead of just classifying PINN research by scientific domains (e.g., geoscience, material science, etc.) as many other reviews do, this paper categorizes PINNs based on the types of differential equations (e.g., diffusion problems, advection problems, etc.) they solve. This equation-first perspective encourages knowledge transfer as the same set of PDEs could be used across multiple scientific domains. In addition, it makes it easier for practitioners to see the strengths and weaknesses of PINNs when dealing with different types of differential equations.

🛠 Practical goodies

Beyond its theoretical insights, this review paper offers immediately useful resources for practitioners:

  • A complete implementation example. In section 3.4, this paper walks through a full PINN implementation to solve a 1D Nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It covers translating equations into PINN formulations, handling boundary and initial conditions, defining neural network architectures, choosing training strategies, selecting collocation points, and applying optimization methods. All implementation details are clearly documented for easy reproducibility. The paper compares PINN performance by varying different hyperparameters, which could offer immediately applicable insights for your own PINN experiments.
  • Available frameworks and software tools. Table 3 compiles a comprehensive list of major PINN toolkits, with detailed tool descriptions provided in section 4.3. The considered backends include not only Tensorflow and PyTorch but also Julia and Jax. This side-by-side comparison of different frameworks is especially useful for picking the right tool for your needs.

💡Who would benefit

  • This review paper benefits anyone new to PINNs and looking for a clear, structured introduction.
  • Engineers and developers looking for practical implementation guidance would find the realistic, hands-on demo, and the thorough comparison of existing PINN frameworks most interesting. Additionally, they can find relevant prior work on differential equations similar to their current problem, which offers insights they can leverage in their own problem-solving.
  • Researchers investigating theoretical aspects of PINN convergence, optimization, or efficiency can also greatly benefit from this paper.

2️⃣ From PINNs to PIKANs: Recent Advances in Physics-Informed Machine Learning

📄 Paper at a glance

  • Authors: J. D. Toscano, V. Oommen, A. J. Varghese, Z. Zou, N. A. Daryakenari, C. Wu, and G. E. Karniadakis
  • Year: 2024
  • Link: arXiv

🔍 What it covers

This paper provides one of the most up-to-date overviews of the latest advancements in PINNs. It emphasises enhancements in network design, feature expansion, optimization strategies, uncertainty quantification, and theoretical insights. The paper also surveys key applications across a range of domains.

Fig 2. Overview of the #2 review paper. (Image by author)

✨ What’s unique

This review paper stands out in the following ways:

  • A structured taxonomy of algorithmic developments. One of the most fresh contributions of this paper is its taxonomy of algorithmic advancements. This new taxonomy scheme elegantly categorizes all the advancements into three core areas: (1) representation model, (2) handling governing equations, and (3) optimization process. This structure provides a clear framework for understanding both current developments and potential directions for future research. In addition, the illustrations used in the paper are top-notch and easily digestible.
Fig 3. The taxonomy of algorithmic developments in PINNs proposed by the #2 paper. (Image by author)
  • Spotlight on Physics-informed Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KAN). KAN, a new architecture based on the Kolmogorov–Arnold representation theorem, is currently a hot topic in deep learning. In the PINN community, some work has already been done to replace the multilayer perceptions (MLP) representation with KANs to gain more expressiveness and training efficiency. The community lacks a comprehensive review of this new line of research. This review paper (section 3.1) exactly fills in the gap.
  • Review on uncertainty quantification (UQ) in PINNs. UQ is essential for the reliable and trustworthy deployment of PINNs when tackling real-world engineering applications. In section 5, this paper provides a dedicated section on UQ, explaining the common sources of uncertainty in solving differential equations with PINNs and reviewing strategies for quantifying prediction confidence.
  • Theoretical advances in PINN training dynamics. In practice, training PINNs is non-trivial. Practitioners are often puzzled by why PINNs training sometimes fail, or how they should be trained optimally. In section 6.2, this paper provides one of the most detailed and up-to-date discussions on this aspect, covering the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) analysis of PINNs, information bottleneck theory, and multi-objective optimization challenges.

🛠 Practical goodies

Even though this review paper leans towards the theory-heavy side, two particularly valuable aspects stand out from a practical perspective:

  • A timeline of algorithmic advances in PINNs. In Appendix A Table, this paper tracks the milestones of key advancements in PINNs, from the original PINN formulation to the most recent extensions to KANs. If you’re working on algorithmic improvements, this timeline gives you a clear view of what’s already been done. If you’re struggling with PINN training or accuracy, you can use this table to find existing methods that might solve your issue.
  • A broad overview of PINN applications across domains. Compared to all the other reviews, this paper strives to give the most comprehensive and updated coverage of PINN applications in not only the engineering domains but also other less-covered fields such as finance. Practitioners can easily find prior works conducted in their domains and draw inspiration.

💡Who would benefit

  • For practitioners working in safety-critical fields that need confidence intervals or reliability estimates on their PINN predictions, the discussion on UQ would be useful. If you are struggling with PINN training instability, slow convergence, or unexpected failures, the discussion on PINN training dynamics can help unpack the theoretical reasons behind these issues.
  • Researchers may find this paper especially interesting because of the new taxonomy, which allows them to see patterns and identify gaps and opportunities for novel contributions. In addition, the review of cutting-edge work on PI-KAN can also be inspiring.

3️⃣ Physics-Informed Neural Networks: An Application-Centric Guide

📄 Paper at a glance

  • Authors: S. Guo (this author)
  • Year: 2024
  • Link: Medium

🔍 What it covers

This article reviews how PINNs are used to tackle different types of engineering tasks. For each task category, the article discusses the problem statement, why PINNs are useful, how PINNs can be implemented to address the problem, and is followed by a concrete use case published in the literature.

Fig 4. Overview of the #3 review paper. (Image by author)

✨ What’s unique

Unlike most reviews that categorize PINN applications either based on the type of differential equations solved or specific engineering domains, this article picks an angle that practitioners care about the most: the engineering tasks solved by PINNs. This work is based on reviewing papers on PINN case studies scattered in various engineering domains. The outcome is a list of distilled recurring functional usage patterns of PINNs:

  • Predictive modeling and simulations, where PINNs are leveraged for dynamical system forecasting, coupled system modeling, and surrogate modeling.
  • Optimization, where PINNs are commonly employed to achieve efficient design optimization, inverse design, model predictive control, and optimized sensor placement.
  • Data-driven insights, where PINNs are used to identify the unknown parameters or functional forms of the system, as well as to assimilate observational data to better estimate the system states.
  • Data-driven enhancement, where PINNs are used to reconstruct the field and enhance the resolution of the observational data.
  • Monitoring, diagnostic, and health assessment, where PINNs are leveraged to act as virtual sensors, anomaly detectors, health monitors, and predictive maintainers.

🛠 Practical goodies

This article places practitioners’ needs at the forefront. While most existing review papers merely answer the question, “Has PINN been used in my field?”, practitioners often seek more specific guidance: “Has PINN been used for the type of problem I’m trying to solve?”. This is precisely what this article tries to address.

By using the proposed five-category functional classification, practitioners can conveniently map their problems to these categories, see how others have solved them, and what worked and what did not. Instead of reinventing the wheel, practitioners can leverage established use cases and adapt proven solutions to their own problems.

💡Who would benefit

This review is best for practitioners who want to see how PINNs are actually being used in the real world. It can also be particularly valuable for cross-disciplinary innovation, as practitioners can learn from solutions developed in other fields.

4️⃣ An Expert’s Guide to Training Physics-informed Neural Networks

📄 Paper at a glance

  • Authors: S. Wang, S. Sankaran, H. Wang, P. Perdikaris
  • Year: 2023
  • Link: arXiv

🔍 What it covers

Even though it doesn’t market itself as a “standard” review, this paper goes all in on providing a comprehensive handbook for training PINNs. It presents a detailed set of best practices for training physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), addressing issues like spectral bias, unbalanced loss terms, and causality violations. It also introduces challenging benchmarks and extensive ablation studies to demonstrate these methods.

Fig 5. Overview of the #4 review paper. (Image by author)

✨ What’s unique

  • A unified “expert’s guide”. The main authors are active researchers in PINNs, working extensively on improving PINN training efficiency and model accuracy for the past years. This paper is a distilled summary of the authors’ past work, synthesizing a broad range of recent PINN techniques (e.g., Fourier feature embeddings, adaptive loss weighting, causal training) into a cohesive training pipeline. This feels like having a mentor who tells you exactly what does and doesn’t work with PINNs.
  • A thorough hyperparameter tuning study. This paper conducts various experiments to show how different tweaks (e.g., different architectures, training schemes, etc.) play out on different PDE tasks. Their ablation studies show precisely which methods move the needle, and by how much.
  • PDE benchmarks. The paper compiles a suite of challenging PDE benchmarks and offers state-of-the-art results that PINNs can achieve.

🛠 Practical goodies

  • A problem-solution cheat sheet. This paper thoroughly documents various techniques addressing common PINN training pain-points. Each technique is clearly presented using a structured format: the why (motivation), how (how the approach addresses the problem), and what (the implementation details). This makes it very easy for practitioners to identify the “cure” based on the “symptoms” observed in their PINN training process. What’s great is that the authors transparently discussed potential pitfalls of each approach, allowing practitioners to make well-informed decisions and effective trade-offs.
  • Empirical insights. The paper shares valuable empirical insights obtained from extensive hyperparameter tuning experiments. It offers practical guidance on choosing suitable hyperparameters, e.g., network architectures and learning rate schedules, and demonstrates how these parameters interact with the advanced PINN training techniques proposed.
  • Ready-to-use library. The paper is accompanied by an optimized JAX library that practitioners can directly adopt or customize. The library supports multi-GPU environments and is ready for scaling to large-scale problems.

💡Who would benefit

  • Practitioners who are struggling with unstable or slow PINN training can find many practical strategies to fix common pathologies. They can also benefit from the straightforward templates (in JAX) to quickly adapt PINNs to their own PDE setups.
  • Researchers looking for challenging benchmark problems and aiming to benchmark new PINN ideas against well-documented baselines will find this paper especially handy.

5️⃣ Domain-Specific Review Papers

Beyond general reviews in PINNs, there are several nice review papers that focus on specific scientific and engineering domains. If you’re working in one of these fields, these reviews could provide a deeper dive into best practices and cutting-edge applications.

1. Heat Transfer Problems

Paper: Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Heat Transfer Problems

The paper provides an application-centric discussion on how PINNs can be used to tackle various thermal engineering problems, including inverse heat transfer, convection-dominated flows, and phase-change modeling. It highlights real-world challenges such as missing boundary conditions, sensor-driven inverse problems, and adaptive cooling system design. The industrial case study related to power electronics is particularly insightful for understanding the usage of PINNs in practice.

2. Power Systems

Paper: Applications of Physics-Informed Neural Networks in Power Systems — A Review

This paper offers a structured overview of how PINNs are applied to critical power grid challenges, including state/parameter estimation, dynamic analysis, power flow calculation, optimal power flow (OPF), anomaly detection, and model synthesis. For each type of application, the paper discusses the shortcomings of traditional power system solutions and explains why PINNs could be advantageous in addressing those shortcomings. This comparative summary is useful for understanding the motivation for adopting PINNs.

3. Fluid Mechanics

Paper: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for fluid mechanics: A review

This paper explored three detailed case studies that demonstrate PINNs application in fluid dynamics: (1) 3D wake flow reconstruction using sparse 2D velocity data, (2) inverse problems in compressible flow (e.g., shock wave prediction with minimal boundary data), and (3) biomedical flow modeling, where PINNs infer thrombus material properties from phase-field data. The paper highlights how PINNs overcome limitations in traditional CFD, e.g., mesh dependency, expensive data assimilation, and difficulty handling ill-posed inverse problems.

4. Additive Manufacturing

Paper: A review on physics-informed machine learning for monitoring metal additive manufacturing process

This paper examines how PINNs address critical challenges specific to additive manufacturing process prediction or monitoring, including temperature field prediction, fluid dynamics modeling, fatigue life estimation, accelerated finite element simulations, and process characteristics prediction.

6️⃣ Conclusion

In this blog post, we went through a curated list of review papers on PINNs, covering fundamental theoretical insights, the latest algorithmic advancements, and practical application-oriented perspectives. For each paper, we highlighted unique contributions, key takeaways, and the audience that would benefit the most from these insights. I hope this curated collection can help you better navigate the evolving field of PINNs.

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F5 grabs agentic AI startup Fletch to bolster security platform

“With the rise of APIs, microservices, and AI-driven workloads, ADCs have never been more critical. The deployment of modern, AI-driven workloads requires a solution that supports intelligent traffic management, provides robust security, and offers unified management across all environments,” said Kunal Anand, F5’s chief innovation officer, about ADSP. The platform

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Wright Cancels $3.7B Funding for Decarbonization Projects

United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright has withdrawn over $3.7 billion of financial assistance awarded by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). The bulk was for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and decarbonization initiatives. “After a thorough and individualized financial review of each award, DOE found that these projects failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars”, the Department of Energy (DOE) said in an online statement. The OCED under then-President Joe Biden awarded 16 of the 24 projects between Election Day and the end of the administration, the DOE said. It did not name the projects. The cancellations are part of a broader review launched earlier by the DOE targeting nearly 200 awards totaling over $15 billion. “DOE utilized this review process to evaluate each of these 24 awards and determined that they did not meet the economic, national security or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE’s investment”, the DOE said. In its last CCS-related funding opportunity offer, the OCED under Biden announced December 19, 2024, up to $1.8 billion to support the design, construction and operation of mid- and large-scale commercial direct air capture facilities and infrastructure.  The full application window was planned for July 2025. However, the online “Notice of Funding Opportunity” says the planned $1.8 billion package is now under review. “The Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is reviewing all its current Notices of Funding Opportunity Announcements”, the notice says. In its May 15 announcement of the review, ordered by Wright’s “Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance Memorandum”, the DOE said, “To comply with the Secretary’s memorandum, the DOE has begun requesting additional information needed to evaluate 179 awards”. “DOE is prioritizing large-scale commercial projects that require more detailed

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House budget bill would kill 330K solar, storage jobs: SEIA

As the Senate reconvenes this week and begins budget negotiations, the Solar Energy Industries Association is lobbying to revise the steep Inflation Reduction Act cuts passed by the House of Representatives, citing projected losses of clean energy jobs in all 50 states. In an analysis released Tuesday, SEIA estimated that Texas and California would be hit hardest by the House bill’s rollback of IRA tax credits, respectively losing 34,100 and 35,700 solar and storage jobs by 2030. Florida would also be significantly impacted, SEIA said, anticipating a loss of 21,800 jobs there. A Thursday report from E2 found that businesses have already “canceled or delayed more than $14 billion in investments and 10,000 new jobs in clean energy and clean vehicle factories since January.” E2 said the investments were canceled “amid concerns over the advance of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’” though several of the canceled projects’ developers have said the cause was softer-than-anticipated electric vehicle demand. One of the largest cancellations E2 cited was automaker Stellantis’ April decision to not move forward with a planned battery plant in Illinois, which E2 estimated represented a loss of around 1,000 jobs. SEIA projected that Illinois would be the fourth-hardest hit state if the Senate passes the House’s IRA cuts, estimating a loss of 13,900 jobs “The analysis also found that the House-passed tax bill could trigger the closure or cancellation of 331 factories and erase $286 billion in local investment in American communities,” SEIA said in a release. The Senate is set to start budget hearings on Tuesday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced at the end of April that Republicans hope to finalize a budget by July 4.

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Energy Transfer Signs 20-Year Agreement to Supply LNG to Japan’s Kyushu

Energy Transfer LP subsidiary Energy Transfer LNG Export LLC entered into a 20-year liquefied natural gas (LNG) sale and purchase agreement (SPA) with Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power Company Inc. related to its Lake Charles LNG project. Under the SPA with Kyushu, Energy Transfer LNG will supply up to 1.0 million metric tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG, the company said in a news release. LNG will be supplied on a free-on-board basis and the purchase price will consist of a fixed liquefaction charge and a gas supply component indexed to the Henry Hub benchmark, according to the release. The agreement marks Kyushu’s first long-term LNG procurement contract from the USA and will further diversify its procurement sources and enhance the stability of its LNG supply, Energy Transfer said. “We are proud to be selected as an LNG supplier by Kyushu, one of Japan’s leading energy companies,” Energy Transfer LNG President Tom Mason said. “Kyushu has been supportive of Lake Charles LNG for a long time and we appreciate their loyalty. We are also pleased that Lake Charles LNG continues to make strong strides toward full commercialization”. The obligations of Energy Transfer LNG under the SPA are subject to Energy Transfer LNG taking a positive final investment decision (FID) on the Lake Charles LNG project and satisfying other conditions precedent, the company said. If Energy Transfer LNG reaches a positive FID, the Lake Charles LNG export facility would be constructed on the existing brownfield regasification facility site and will capitalize on Energy Transfer’s four existing LNG storage tanks, two deep water berths and other LNG infrastructure, the company said. Lake Charles LNG would also benefit from its direct connection to Energy Transfer’s existing Trunkline natural gas pipeline system. The system provides connections to multiple intrastate and interstate pipelines, which allow access

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Uniper, Microsoft Elevate AI Partnership

Microsoft Corp. and Uniper SE have agreed to intensify joint efforts in advancing the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the energy industry. As part of their new partnership the companies will build an AI lab at the German power and gas utility’s headquarters in Düsseldorf. “The collaboration between Microsoft and Uniper focuses on identifying, evaluating, and implementing specific use cases”, Uniper said in an online statement. “A key focus is the further development of the company-wide AI and data strategy, integrating data from different sources, and ensuring high data quality”, the company said. “Uniper will contribute its extensive expertise in the energy sector to the strategic partnership, ensuring that the solutions are tailored to the specific needs and challenges of the energy industry. Microsoft will bring its experience with cross-industry technology solutions and the latest developments in AI. “The partnership includes clearly defined criteria regarding data protection and security policies”. Data used by the partners in AI applications will be stored in European Union servers, according to Uniper. It added, “A central pillar of the collaboration between Uniper and Microsoft is also promoting a culture that supports AI as a tool for collaboration. Only if employees trust the security and reliability of AI applications can they fully realize their potential”. Uniper aims to be a global leader in AI application in the energy industry. “Therefore, AI will be integrated into all major business processes and strategic tasks at Uniper to make them more efficient”, it said. “The future energy system will be more volatile, decentralized, less carbon-intensive, and more interconnected with other sectors than it is today”, the company noted. AI “helps optimize energy trading and the use of various generation types, makes maintenance and servicing of plants more efficient and cost-effective, and better meets customer needs”, Uniper explained.

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CINEA Finalizes Grants for Five Cross-Border Energy Projects

The European Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Executive Agency (CINEA) on Monday executed grant agreements for five of 41 cross-border energy infrastructure projects selected for the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for Energy. The European Commission, through CINEA, is set to award a total of EUR 1.25 billion ($1.43 billion) to the 41 projects, mostly to support their study phases. These projects constitute the first round of CEF for Energy funding under the revised Trans-European Networks for Energy (TEN-E) Regulation of the European Union. The top recipient among the five projects that received their grant certificates Monday is the Italian portion of the H2 Backbone project. CEF will provide EUR 24 million to state-backed Snam SpA for engineering and environmental studies, according to a press release by CINEA. H2 Backbone is part of the SoutH2 Corridor hydrogen pipeline system being developed by transmission system operators in Austria, Italy and Germany. SoutH2 Corridor, itself part of a broader project called the Europea Hydrogen Backbone, is planned to have 3,300 kilometers of pipelines, over 65 percent of which would be repurposed from existing lines, across the three countries. The Italian section accounts for 2,300 kilometers and will include several hundred megawatts of compression stations. Targeted to be put onstream 2030, SoutH2 Corridor aims to carry renewable hydrogen produced in North Africa to Europe. Meanwhile the Offshore Wind Connection South Brittany project of Réseau de Transport d’Électricité (RTE) received a grant certificate for EUR 21.8 million. “This investment will support technical studies and permitting for the offshore grid connecting future floating wind farms to South Brittany, helping to accelerate renewable energy deployment in the French North Atlantic Sea Basin”, CINEA said. A project to build an electricity exchange link between Landes in France and Navarra in Spain sealed EUR 11.1 million in CEF funding. RTE and Red Eléctrica de España will spend the

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Brazil Seeks $6.2B from Oil Industry to Shore Up Finances

Brazil’s energy ministry has proposed measures to raise around 35 billion reais ($6.2 billion) from the oil industry over the next two years to help the government meet its fiscal targets.  On Monday, Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira presented measures to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that include selling oil exploration licenses and a review of the reference prices used to calculate oil taxes, the ministry said in a message. If approved, it would be an alternative to a controversial increase in tax rates on some financial transactions.  Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has been struggling to deliver on promised fiscal goals due to lower-than-expected revenue and higher spending. Last week, Moody’s Ratings lowered Brazil’s credit outlook to stable from positive on expectations of larger fiscal deficits. The change in reference prices could erode margins for oil companies and have a negative impact on the investment environment, adding to existing concerns about licensing delays and lackluster exploration results, said Marcelo de Assis, an energy consultant.  “These are heavy measures that could cause more problems in the medium and long term,” de Assis said.  The ministry is pushing for the country’s oil regulator, known as the ANP, to review the reference prices used to calculate taxes paid by oil producers, including state-controlled Petrobras, before the end of July.  The oil and gas measures include a bill to authorize the federal government to sell oil production rights in areas of the pre-salt, Brazil’s most prolific offshore oil region, that haven’t been licensed yet. It would include areas near the giant Tupi, Mero and Atapu fields, and could raise 15 billion reais this year if approved by Congress. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject

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HPE Nonstop servers target data center, high-throughput applications

HPE has bumped up the size and speed of its fault-tolerant Nonstop Compute servers. There are two new servers – the 8TB, Intel Xeon-based Nonstop Compute NS9 X5 and Nonstop Compute NS5 X5 – aimed at enterprise customers looking to upgrade their transaction processing network infrastructure or support larger application workloads. Like other HPE Nonstop systems, the two new boxes include compute, software, storage, networking and database resources as well as full-system clustering and HPE’s specialized Nonstop operating system. The flagship NS9 X5 features support for dual-fabric HDR200 InfiniBand interconnect, which effectively doubles the interconnect bandwidth between it and other servers compared to the current NS8 X4, according to an HPE blog detailing the new servers. It supports up to 270 networking ports per NS9 X system, can be clustered with up to 16 other NS9 X5s, and can support 25 GbE network connectivity for modern data center integration and high-throughput applications, according to HPE.

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AI boom exposes infrastructure gaps: APAC’s data center demand to outstrip supply by 42%

“Investor confidence in data centres is expected to strengthen over the remainder of the decade,” the report said. “Strong demand and solid underlying fundamentals fuelled by AI and cloud services growth will provide a robust foundation for investors to build scale.” Enterprise strategies must evolve With supply constrained and prices rising, CBRE recommended that enterprises rethink data center procurement models. Waiting for optimal sites or price points is no longer viable in many markets. Instead, enterprises should pursue early partnerships with operators that have robust development pipelines and focus on securing power-ready land. Build-to-suit models are becoming more relevant, especially for larger capacity requirements. Smaller enterprise facilities — those under 5MW — may face sustainability challenges in the long term. The report suggested that these could become “less relevant” as companies increasingly turn to specialized colocation and hyperscale providers. Still, traditional workloads will continue to represent up to 50% of total demand through 2030, preserving value in existing facilities for non-AI use cases, the report added. The region’s projected 15 to 25 GW gap is more than a temporary shortage — it signals a structural shift, CBRE said. Enterprises that act early to secure infrastructure, invest in emerging markets, and align with power availability will be best positioned to meet digital transformation goals. “Those that wait may find themselves locked out of the digital infrastructure they need to compete,” the report added.

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Cisco bolsters DNS security package

The software can block domains associated with phishing, malware, botnets, and other high-risk categories such as cryptomining or new domains that haven’t been reported previously. It can also create custom block and allow lists and offers the ability to pinpoint compromised systems using real-time security activity reports, Brunetto wrote. According to Cisco, many organizations leave DNS resolution to their ISP. “But the growth of direct enterprise internet connections and remote work make DNS optimization for threat defense, privacy, compliance, and performance ever more important,” Cisco stated. “Along with core security hygiene, like a patching program, strong DNS-layer security is the leading cost-effective way to improve security posture. It blocks threats before they even reach your firewall, dramatically reducing the alert pressure your security team manages.” “Unlike other Secure Service Edge (SSE) solutions that have added basic DNS security in a ‘checkbox’ attempt to meet market demand, Cisco Secure Access – DNS Defense embeds strong security into its global network of 50+ DNS data centers,” Brunetto wrote. “Among all SSE solutions, only Cisco’s features a recursive DNS architecture that ensures low-latency, fast DNS resolution, and seamless failover.”

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HPE Aruba unveils raft of new switches for data center, campus modernization

And in large-scale enterprise environments embracing collapsed-core designs, the switch acts as a high-performance aggregation layer. It consolidates services, simplifies network architecture, and enforces security policies natively, reducing complexity and operational cost, Gray said. In addition, the switch offers the agility and security required at colocation facilities and edge sites. Its integrated Layer 4 stateful security and automation-ready platform enable rapid deployment while maintaining robust control and visibility over distributed infrastructure, Gray said. The CX 10040 significantly expands the capacity it can provide and the roles it can serve for enterprise customers, according to one industry analyst. “From the enterprise side, this expands on the feature set and capabilities of the original 10000, giving customers the ability to run additional services directly in the network,” said Alan Weckel, co-founder and analyst with The 650 Group. “It helps drive a lower TCO and provide a more secure network.”  Aimed as a VMware alternative Gray noted that HPE Aruba is combining its recently announced Morpheus VM Essentials plug-in package, which offers a hypervisor-based package aimed at hybrid cloud virtualization environments, with the CX 10040 to deliver a meaningful alternative to Broadcom’s VMware package. “If customers want to get out of the business of having to buy VM cloud or Cloud Foundation stuff and all of that, they can replace the distributed firewall, microsegmentation and lots of the capabilities found in the old VMware NSX [networking software] and the CX 10k, and Morpheus can easily replace that functionality [such as VM orchestration, automation and policy management],” Gray said. The 650 Group’s Weckel weighed in on the idea of the CX 10040 as a VMware alternative:

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Indian startup Refroid launches India’s first data center CDUs

They use heat exchangers and pumps to regulate the flow and temperature of fluid delivered to equipment for cooling, while isolating the technology cooling system loop from facility systems. The technology addresses limitations of traditional air cooling, which industry experts say cannot adequately handle the heat generated by modern AI processors and high-density computing applications. Strategic significance for India Industry analysts view the development as a critical milestone for India’s data center ecosystem. “India generates 20% of global data, yet contributes only 3% to global data center capacity. This imbalance is not merely spatial — it’s systemic,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research. “The emergence of indigenously developed CDUs signals a strategic pivot. Domestic CDU innovation is a defining moment in India’s transition from data centre host to technology co-creator.” Neil Shah, VP for research and partner at Counterpoint Research, noted that major international players like Schneider, Vertiv, Asetek, Liquidstack, and Zutacore have been driving most CDU deployments in Indian enterprises and data centers. “Having a local indigenous CDU tech and supplier designed with Indian weather, infrastructure and costs in mind expands options for domestic data center demand,” he said. AI driving data center cooling revolution India’s data center capacity reached approximately 1,255 MW between January and September 2024 and was projected to expand to around 1,600 MW by the end of 2024, according to CBRE India’s 2024 Data Center Market Update. Multiple market research firms have projected the India data center market to grow from about $5.7 billion in 2024 to $12 billion by 2030. Bhavaraju cited aggressive projections for the sector’s expansion, with AI workloads expected to account for 30% of total workloads by 2030. “All of them need liquid cooling,” he said, noting that “today’s latest GPU servers – GB200 from Nvidia

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Platform approach gains steam among network teams

Revisting the platform vs. point solutions debate The dilemma of whether to deploy an assortment of best-of-breed products from multiple vendors or go with a unified platform of “good enough” tools from a single vendor has vexed IT execs forever. Today, the pendulum is swinging toward the platform approach for three key reasons. First, complexity, driven by the increasingly distributed nature of enterprise networks, has emerged as a top challenge facing IT execs. Second, the lines between networking and security are blurring, particularly as organizations deploy zero trust network access (ZTNA). And third, to reap the benefits of AIOps, generative AI and agentic AI, organizations need a unified data store. “The era of enterprise connectivity platforms is upon us,” says IDC analyst Brandon Butler. “Organizations are increasingly adopting platform-based approaches to their enterprise connectivity infrastructure to overcome complexity and unlock new business value. When enhanced by AI, enterprise platforms can increase productivity, enrich end-user experiences, enhance security, and ultimately drive new opportunities for innovation.” In IDC’s Worldwide AI in Networking Special Report, 78% of survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “I am moving to an AI-powered platform approach for networking.” Gartner predicts that 70% of enterprises will select a broad platform for new multi-cloud networking software deployments by 2027, an increase from 10% in early 2024. The breakdown of silos between network and security operations will be driven by organizations implementing zero-trust principles as well as the adoption of AI and AIOps. “In the future, enterprise networks will be increasingly automated, AI-assisted and more tightly integrated with security across LAN, data center and WAN domains,” according to Gartner’s 2025 Strategic Roadmap for Enterprise Networking. While all of the major networking vendors have announced cloud-based platforms, it’s still relatively early days. For example, Cisco announced a general framework for Cisco

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs).  In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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