Decapitating Huawei & Recapitating America | Achievable Big Stuff: IBM’s 5 in 5 | How Steve Carlton Got His 300th Win

EE Times Current · 2 Oct 2020 · 47m

AI in practice: 3 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Chris Miller, an economic historian at Tufts University, argues that the U.S. should focus government support for the semiconductor industry on basic research and ecosystem building rather than subsidizing domestic manufacturing, as seen in the Chips for America Act. Jeff Wesler, VP of IBM Research, discusses IBM's '5 in 5' initiative, which uses AI, high-performance computing, and quantum computing to accelerate the discovery of sustainable materials for challenges like CO2 capture, battery design, and nitrogen fixation. The episode also covers the historical context of U.S.-China trade tensions and a segment on the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulationrobo RXN100s or 1000s of experiments

IBM used its robotic chemistry system to autonomously mix chemicals and run hundreds or thousands of experiments in parallel based on AI-generated recipes, accelerating the discovery of new materials.

“we have, we call our robo RXN system, where the machine itself can be run. The robotic machine itself can be run to mix the chemicals up under the direction of both the scientists as well as, you know, the AI recipes that come up that the AI system can produce on what combinations might be the right steps to actually produce a specific molecule.”

Speaker 4 · Hear it at 25:00

Engineering & simulation

AI systems are used to read through large corpora of papers and patents to surface material combinations and hypothesize new experiments, speeding up the discovery process for scientists.

“If an AI system could actually read through much larger corpuses of papers and patents and experimental results, it could hopefully, and could understand what it was reading in terms of what the features are you're looking for. It could then surface ideas and combinations that maybe the individual scientists wouldn't be able to understand on their own or find on their own just because they can't read that many papers.”

Speaker 4 · Hear it at 25:00

Engineering & simulation

AI tools were used to sift through medical studies to identify existing drugs that might be repurposed for treating COVID-19, leading to the identification of potential therapeutic candidates.

“a lot of that work comes from the ability for AI to read through large numbers of studies and find places where a doctor perhaps is given a medicine to a patient that has more than one illness. So he's giving it to him for specific illness, but happens to notice that it's actually helping with the other illness.”

Speaker 4 · Hear it at 35:47

Mentioned

Companies
Huawei, IBM, Intel, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, DARPA, Daimler, Central Glass, Sitis
Tools
RoboRXN
Also
Chips for America Act

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