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Title: America's Los Alamos Lab Is Now Investing Heavily In AI For Science

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/03/04472...

Established in 1943 to coordinate America's building of the first atomic
bomb, the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico is still "one of the world's
largest and most advanced scientific institutions" notes Wikipedia. And it
now has a "National Security AI Office," where senior director Jason Pruet is
working to help "prepare for a future in which AI will reshape the landscape
of science and security," according to the lab's science and technology
magazine 1663. "This year, the Lab invested more in AI-related work than at
any point in history..." Pruet: AI is starting to feel like the next great
foundation for scientific progress. Big companies are spending billions on
large machines, but the buy-in costs of working at the frontiers of AI are so
high that no university has the exascale-class machines needed to run the
latest AI models. We're at a place now where we, meaning the government, can
revitalize that pact by investing in the infrastructure to study AI for the
public good... Part of what we're doing with the Lab's machines, like Venado -
 which has 2500 GPUs - is giving universities access to that scale of
computing. The scale is just completely different. A typical university might
have 50 or 100 GPUs. Right now, for example, we have partnerships with the
University of California, the University of Michigan, and many other
universities where researchers can tap into this infrastructure. That's
something we want to expand on. Having university collaboration will be
critical if the Department of Energy is going to have a comprehensive AI
program at scale that is focused on national security and energy dominance...
There was a time when I wouldn't have advocated for government investment in
AI at the scale we're seeing now. But the weight of the evidence has become
overwhelming. Large models - "frontier models" - have shown such
extraordinary capabilities with recent advances in areas as diverse as
hypothesis generation, mathematics, biological design, and complex
multiphysics simulations. The potential for transformative impact is too
significant to ignore. "He no longer views the technology as just a tool, but
as a fundamental shift in how scientists approach problems and make
discoveries," the article concludes. "The global race humanity is now in...
is about how to harness the technology's potential while mitigating its
harms." Thanks to Slashdot reader rabbitface25 - also a Los Alamo Lab science
writer - for sharing his article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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