The Department of Energyās 91°µĶų gathered more than 200 artificial intelligence experts and domain scientists for an AI expo exploring cutting edge artificial intelligence thatās making a difference for scientific research institutions around the world.
The labās AI Initiative, a program dedicated to advancing AI throughout the laboratoryās research portfolio, hosted the event for ORNL researchers and staff and featured keynote speeches, poster presentations and a mini hackathon session aimed at giving attendees hands-on experience with this evolving technology. ORNL hosted its first such event in 2019.
ORNLās Director of Artificial Intelligence Programs Prasanna Balaprakash stressed the significance of having a large crowd of ORNL staff from diverse research backgrounds.
āThis demonstrated the ORNL research community's commitment to leveraging AIās transformative capabilities to advance science, engineering and national security,ā said Balaprakash.
Attendees had an opportunity to work with some of the latest AI models ā like OpenAIās o1 and Anthropicās Claude 3.5 Sonnet models ā through the mini hackathon session. The event was also an opportunity to showcase ORNLās AI capabilities, highlight AI-based science and engineering research and open the door to opportunities for collaboration between domain experts and AI experts across the lab.
This demonstrated the ORNL research community's commitment to leveraging AIās transformative capabilities to advance science, engineering and national security.
Featured keynote speakers from within ORNL included Balaprakash; Deputy for Science and Technology Susan Hubbard, and Artificial Intelligence Programs Director Edmon Begoli. NVIDIA senior research scientist Jean Kossaifi and Amarda Shehu of George Mason University presented keynotes as well.
āAttending the AI Expo, I was reminded once more of the depth and quality of AI research happening at ORNL,ā said Begoli, who serves as director of the Center for AI Security Research, or CAISER. āIām continually impressed by the competence and dedication of our researchers.ā
ORNL has a long history as a global leader in advancing AI, with research on the technology as early as 1979 with the launch of the Oak Ridge Applied Artificial Intelligence Project.
āAI is transitioning from its predictive and generative phases into a new era of reasoning, which we think will enable even more opportunities for AI to propel scientific discovery and innovation,ā said Hubbard, who opened the event. āBecause it is critical for ORNL to help lead this transition, we have taken several steps to support and galvanize our researchers. Examples include the ORNL and exploration of a āscientific laboratory of the futureā concept; development of an AI academy to raise awareness of new developments and to lead tutorials such as today; an AI governance committee focused on the proper and ethical use of AI across the lab; and ORNLās recently released AI Assistant, powered by ChatGPT,ā accessible to lab staff.
The event comes on the heels of the ā1,000 scientist jam session,ā a first-of-its-kind event held last month from nine national laboratories to test generative artificial intelligence models for their functionality in scientific research. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright observed the event while on a visit to the lab, along with OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energyās Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit . ā Mark Alewine
