Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI announced a new partnership this morning that will be “focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide.”
Sam Altman of OpenAI announced the partnership during a company event this morning and Los Alamos confirmed it with a press release on its website. The plan is for OpenAI to install its latest o-series models on Los Alamos’ Venado supercomputer and set the massive machine to the task of helping solve some of the world’s most existential and terrifying problems.
Los Alamos listed the problems it expects the OpenAI-powered supercomputer to tackle:
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Identifying new approaches to treating and preventing disease
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Improving U.S. security through improved detection of natural and man-made threats, such as biology and cyber, before they emerge
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Achieving a new era of U.S. energy leadership by unlocking the full potential of natural resources and revolutionizing the nation’s energy infrastructure
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Deepening our understanding of the forces that govern the universe, from fundamental mathematics to high-energy physics
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Enhancing cybersecurity and protecting the American power grid
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Accelerating the basic science that underpins U.S. global technological leadership
The Venado is one of those massive supercomputers that dominates a room. It uses NVIDIA’s advanced GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and was built in partnership with NVIDIA and Hewlett-Packard Enterprises.
“As threats to the nation become more complex and more pressing, we need new approaches and advanced technologies to preserve America’s security,” Thom Mason, Laboratory director of Los Alamos in a statement on its website. “Artificial Intelligence models from OpenAI will allow us to do this more successfully, while also advancing our scientific missions to solve some of the nation’s most important challenges.”
OpenAI has been cozying up to the government for a few years now, and it’s been turbocharged under the Trump Presidency. Earlier this week, Altman announced ChatGPT Gov, a specialized version of its chatbot for government applications.
Los Alamos and OpenAI have a relationship going back almost a year. Last summer, the pair announced a partnership that focused more narrowly on bioscience. At the time, Los Alamos told Gizmodo that it was optimistic but cautious about AI.
It emphasized that AI was a tool and that humans were the real threat, not the tools themselves. “Our first pilot technology evaluation will look to understand how AI enables individuals to learn how to do protocols in the real world which will give us a better understanding of not only how it can help enable science but also whether it would enable a bad actor to execute a nefarious activity in the lab,” Los Alamos said at the time.
Los Alamos must have been impressed with OpenAI and its models, because now they’ll be unleashed on some of the most pernicious and dangerous problems humanity faces.
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