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

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.

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