New US supercomputer named after Jennifer Doudna to drive AI and science breakthroughs
A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday.U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It's due to switch on next year.advertisement
'One of the key use cases will be genomics research,' said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia's AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. 'It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field.'Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist.It's not clear yet how the computer will rank on the TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked computer is El Capitan, located about an hour's drive away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That's followed by other supercomputers at U.S. national labs in Tennessee and Illinois.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
3 hours ago
- Mint
Google Deepmind CEO says he will pay ‘thousands of dollars' to get rid of THIS! Would you do the same?
Artificial intelligence pioneer and Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis has said that he would pay 'thousands of dollars' to get rid of his daily emails as he gets too overwhelmed by them. Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, June 2, the Nobel laureate said his team at Google Deepmind is working on an AI-powered mechanism that will address this exact issue and take over the tedious task of managing email inboxes. 'I would love to get rid of my email. I would pay thousands of dollars per month to get rid of that,' Hassabis said. The new system will be aimed at helping users managing their email inboxes, sorting through mails automatically and replying to regular messages. The tool will also ensure that the important messages do not go unnoticed. 'The thing I really want – and we're working on – is can we have a next-generation email?,' Hassabis said. He revealed that the new AI tool by Google will not only manage and filter emails but also send replies that match the user's writing style. The tool is currently under development. Demis Hassabis also said on Monday that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve 'in today's geopolitical context'. At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological control. Speaking at the SXSW festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said.
News18
5 hours ago
- News18
Google DeepMind CEO Predicts AI Will Help Humans Colonise The Galaxy Starting 2030
Last Updated: Google DeepMind CEO and Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis said that starting 2030 humans will be able to colonise the galaxy and artificial intelligence will power this revolution. 2024 Nobel Prize winner and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told a news outlet recently that humans will be able to 'colonise the galaxy" starting 2030 and the revolution will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The Nobel chemistry laureate told WIRED that AI will lead humanity to far into the universe while turbocharging human productivity. Hassabis, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize with David Baker 'for computational protein design", said the 'golden era' was only five years away and that AI models set to bring about a renaissance in human existence. 'If everything goes well, then we should be in an era of radical abundance, a kind of golden era. AGI can solve what I call root-node problems in the world, curing terrible diseases, much healthier and longer lifespans, finding new energy sources," Hassabis was quoted as saying in an interview with WIRED. AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, refers to an AI system with human-like cognitive abilities, capable of understanding, learning, and applying knowledge across a wide range of tasks. 'If that all happens, then it should be an era of maximum human flourishing, where we travel to the stars and colonise the galaxy. I think that will begin to happen in 2030," he said. When asked whether abundance through AI would still result in unequal distribution, Demis Hassabis said the technology could make the world feel 'like a non-zero-sum game." Although AGI has the potential to open vast new frontiers for humanity, Hassabis has previously expressed concern that society may not be prepared for its impact and admitted that the risks and consequences of such powerful technology often keep him up at night. 'It's a sort of like probability distribution. But it's coming, either way it's coming very soon and I'm not sure society's quite ready for that yet. And we need to think that through and also think about these issues that I talked about earlier, to do with the controllability of these systems and also the access to these systems and ensuring that all goes well," he said. He has also advocated for creating a UN-style global body to oversee the development and governance of AGI. 'I would advocate for a kind of CERN for AGI, and by that, I mean a kind of international research-focused high-end collaboration on the frontiers of AGI development to try and make that as safe as possible," he further added.
Mint
7 hours ago
- Mint
Nvidia signs pact with Andhra Pradesh govt to foster India's AI ecosystem; Over 500 startups to gain R&D benefit
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday said the state is taking bold initiatives to lead India's Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, referring to the state government's pact with tech giant Nvidia. On Friday, the southern state and Nvidia inked an agreement to jointly advance the establishment of a proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI) university in the state and foster a robust ecosystem through skilling, research, infrastructure development, and startup acceleration. "Under the leadership of IT Minister Nara Lokesh, we have entered into an MoU with Nvidia to build a strong and inclusive AI ecosystem in the state," said Naidu in a post on 'X'. With support from Nvidia for curriculum and training, 10,000 engineering students will receive skill training over the next two years, he said, adding that 500 AI startups from the southern state will gain access to Nvidia's 'Inception Program' for global exposure and key resources. Further, plans are underway to establish India's first AI University in collaboration with Nvidia for shaping the infrastructure and research capabilities, said the CM. From education and skilling to research and innovation, this initiative is laying the foundation for a Swarna Andhra Pradesh, Naidu added.
