An AI is set to try and work out how a potentially limitless supply of energy can be used on Earth.
It could finally solve the mysteries of fusion power, letting researchers capture and control the process that powers the sun and stars.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University hope to harness a massive new supercomputer to work out how the doughnut-shaped devices, known as tokamaks, can be used.
Researchers have struggled with disruptions that can halt the reactions and damage the devices.
Now an artificial intelligence system that can predict and tame such disruptions has been selected to be one of the first projects to run on the Aurora supercomputer, which is set to become the first U.S. exascale system upon its expected arrival at Argonne in 2021.
The system will be capable of performing a quintillion (1018) calculations per second — 50-to-100 times faster than the most powerful supercomputers today.
'Our research will utilize capabilities to accelerate progress that can only come from the deep learning form of artificial intelligence,' said William Tang, a principal research physicist at PPPL.
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