GPT-4 as an interface between researchers and computational software: improving usability and reproducibility
This addresses usability and reproducibility issues for researchers in computational materials science, representing an incremental improvement by applying an existing LLM to a specific domain.
The paper tackles the challenges of high adoption barriers and poor reproducibility in computational materials science by using GPT-4 to generate input files from English descriptions and detailed task descriptions from input files, finding it produces correct files for simple tasks and useful starting points for complex simulations.
Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly important role in science and engineering. For example, their ability to parse and understand human and computer languages makes them powerful interpreters and their use in applications like code generation are well-documented. We explore the ability of the GPT-4 LLM to ameliorate two major challenges in computational materials science: i) the high barriers for adoption of scientific software associated with the use of custom input languages, and ii) the poor reproducibility of published results due to insufficient details in the description of simulation methods. We focus on a widely used software for molecular dynamics simulations, the Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS), and quantify the usefulness of input files generated by GPT-4 from task descriptions in English and its ability to generate detailed descriptions of computational tasks from input files. We find that GPT-4 can generate correct and ready-to-use input files for relatively simple tasks and useful starting points for more complex, multi-step simulations. In addition, GPT-4's description of computational tasks from input files can be tuned from a detailed set of step-by-step instructions to a summary description appropriate for publications. Our results show that GPT-4 can reduce the number of routine tasks performed by researchers, accelerate the training of new users, and enhance reproducibility.