Heterogeneous ensemble enables a universal uncertainty metric for atomistic foundation models

K Liu and ZX Wei and W Gao and P Dey and MHF Sluiter and F Shuang, NPJ COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS, 12, 34 (2025).

DOI: 10.1038/s41524-025-01905-x

Universal machine-learning interatomic potentials (uMLIPs) are emerging as foundation models for atomistic simulation, offering near-ab initio accuracy at far lower cost. Their safe, broad deployment is limited by the absence of reliable, general uncertainty estimates. We present a unified, scalable uncertainty metric, U, built from a heterogeneous ensemble that reuses existing pretrained MLIPs. Across diverse chemistries and structures, U strongly tracks true prediction errors and robustly ranks configuration-level risk. Using U, we perform uncertainty-aware distillation to train system-specific potentials with far fewer labels: for tungsten, we match full density-functional-theory (DFT) training using 4% of the DFT data; for MoNbTaW, a dataset distilled by U supports high-accuracy potential training. By filtering numerical label noise, the distilled models can in some cases exceed the accuracy of the MLIPs trained on DFT data. This framework provides a practical reliability monitor and guides data selection and fine-tuning, enabling cost-efficient, accurate, and safer deployment of foundation models.

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