Five ways AI is leveling up ORNL research
By the time chatbots and other trendy AI tech began dominating business and pop culture, ORNL had already spent four and a half decades advancing AI as a cutting-edge research tool. In other words, if you were born the day the Oak Ridge Applied Artificial Intelligence Project was created in 1979, AARP flyers might soon be arriving in your mail.
So how do those decades of experience show up in 2024? AI permeates every facet of ORNL research, leveling up work that’s already groundbreaking. From supercomputing to climate science, AI drives the laboratories, test beds and field work that have made ORNL one of the world’s preeminent research institutions. Our teams are also leading the way in making AI safe, trustworthy and energy efficient.
Here are five ways Oak Ridge National Laboratory is using artificial intelligence to transform our everyday lives.
AI for materials
Everything depends on materials.
From improving new batteries for electric vehicles to studying the atomic structure of metallic glass, ORNL researchers are laser-focused on finding the revolutionary materials that will make the world a better, more sustainable place in the 21st century.
How does one discover a new material, you ask? Today, it’s with an assist from AI.
Read more about AI for materials. (This would be a link to a new basic page)
AI for pharmaceuticals
Like materials science, drug development can be an endless guessing game.
We know a lot about chemicals and their properties; what we need to know is how they will interact to address specific health problems. It’s a much more difficult problem, like looking for a needle in an ocean of haystacks.
“One of the challenges for developing a drug to attack COVID, for instance, would be that you need to create a molecule that will attach itself to a particular part of the virus and prevent it from infecting humans,” said ORNL computational scientist John Gounley. “The problem is, there are a very large number of molecules.”
Read more about AI for pharmaceuticals.
AI for the power grid
If electricity is the life blood of the country, then the power grid is its arteries.
Don’t believe it? Just turn off the power for a couple of days. The effects would go way beyond spoiled leftovers, from nonfunctioning medical centers to blinking traffic lights. And with the rise of electric vehicles, the power grid is more important than ever.
That’s why a properly functioning — and secure — power grid is so important, and AI is playing a critical role. ORNL researchers are developing new technologies such as virtual models called digital twins to find sensitivities in the power grid and identify potential breakdowns before they happen.
Read more about AI for grid.