Latest news with #scientificbreakthroughs
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'Aurora,' new super computer at Argonne National Lab to help solve science's biggest problems
The Brief Aurora, a $500 million supercomputer at Argonne National Lab, can perform a quintillion calculations per second and will run 24/7. Spanning two basketball courts, it supports research in cancer, AI, astrophysics, and more. Scientists worldwide can apply to use Aurora, which is seen as a major tool for global scientific breakthroughs. LEMONT, Ill. - Whether it's nuclear fusion, curing cancer or exploring the universe, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont have a big and fast new computing tool at their disposal. And its name is Aurora. What we know "We're here to celebrate Aurora, which is our new supercomputer," said Argonne Director of Science for Supercomputing Katherine Riley. "It's one of the biggest systems in the world."On Wednesday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for one of the biggest artificial brains in the world, which was switched on earlier this year. Aurora is a supercomputing system as large as two basketball courts, taking up an entire floor at Argonne. It's powered with 300 miles of cable and cooled by 44,000 gallons of water. "Aurora is a strategic national asset for America, and it's already helping us deliver breakthrough science for global impact," said Argonne Laboratory Director Paul makes this computer special is the number and speed of calculations it can perform each second. That number? A one followed by 18 zeros. It's the same as if every human being on earth simultaneously solved 125 million math problems in a second. "It's big. We're talking about a really big number," said Riley. Aurora will be made available to scientists and researchers from all over the world to solve all manner of problems. "Every area of biology. Astrophysics. Cosmology and how we blow up stars. Chemistry. Material science. Particle physics," said Riley. University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos said supercomputers like Aurora are at the forefront of artificial intelligence. "Essentially, we're at the dawn of the age of thinking as scientists with machines, where the machines are equal partners," he $500 million supercomputer was built with funds from the Department of Energy. Energy Sec. Chris Wright, on hand for the dedication, said artificial intelligence is not something to be feared. "Artificial intelligence isn't humans. It's a tool to make humans more powerful and grow their dreams and grow their achievements," Wright who gets to use Aurora? Scientists, researchers, and companies interested in using its brain power must apply for time on the machine. And yes, it will be running 24/7, 365 days a year. The Source Details for this story were provided by Fox 32 reporting. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Georgia Tech to build $20M AI supercomputer to accelerate scientific breakthroughs
The National Science Foundation has awarded Georgia Tech and its partners $20 million to build a new supercomputer that will use AI to enable scientific breakthroughs. The supercomputer, called Nexus, will be one of the most advanced, AI-focused research tools in the US. Nexus will be used to help scientists develop new medicines, advance clean energy, understand how the brain works, and drive manufacturing innovations. 'Georgia Tech is proud to be one of the nation's leading sources of the AI talent and technologies that are powering a revolution in our economy,' said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. 'It's fitting we've been selected to host this new supercomputer, which will support a new wave of AI-centered innovation across the nation. We're grateful to the NSF, and we are excited to get to work.' Georgia Tech said it will support work in many fields, including climate science, health, aerospace, and robotics. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Nexus will be incredibly powerful, able to crank out over 400 quadrillion operations per second. The school said that's the equivalent of everyone in the world performing 50 million calculations every second. Scientists from any US institution can apply to use Nexus. Georgia Tech will build Nexus in partnership with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which runs several supercomputers. The two schools will link their systems through a new high-speed network. Georgia Tech will begin building Nexus this year and plans to have it completed in Spring 2026. When it's completed, researchers can apply for access. Georgia Tech will manage the system, provide support, and reserve up to 10% of its capacity to use for its own research. TRENDING STORIES: GBI called in to investigate deaths of GA teens believed to have been struck by lightning Police ID vehicle in unreleased Beyoncé music theft investigation Mother claims Villa Rica hotel refused refund after sleeping on soiled mattress [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hugging Face Co-Founder Challenges AI Optimists: 'Models Can't Ask Original Scientific Questions'
Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer at Hugging Face, has cast doubt on the belief that current artificial intelligence systems will lead to major scientific breakthroughs. Wolf told Fortune that today's large language models, or LLMs, excel at providing answers but fall short when it comes to formulating original questions. 'In science, asking the question is the hard part,' he said. 'Once the question is asked, often the answer is quite obvious, but the tough part is really asking the question, and models are very bad at asking great questions.' Don't Miss: GoSun's breakthrough rooftop EV charger already has 2,000+ units reserved — become an investor in this $41.3M clean energy brand today. Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential. Wolf's comments were in response to a blog post by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who argues that artificial intelligence could compress a century's worth of scientific breakthroughs into just a few years. Wolf said he initially found the post compelling but became skeptical after rereading. 'It was saying AI is going to solve cancer, and it's going to solve mental health problems—it's going to even bring peace into the world. But then I read it again and realized there's something that sounds very wrong about it, and I don't believe that,' he told Fortune. San Francisco-based Anthropic is backed by tech giants, including Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)), and is also known for its Claude family of AI models. For Wolf, the core issue lies in how LLMs are trained. In another blog post, Wolf argues that today's AI systems are built to predict likely outcomes, act as "yes-men on servers," capable of mimicking human responses but incapable of challenging assumptions or generating original ideas. "To create an Einstein in a data center, we don't just need a system that knows all the answers, but rather one that can ask questions nobody else has thought of or dared to ask," Wolf wrote. He cited that real scientific progress often comes from paradigm shifts—like Copernicus proposing heliocentrism or the invention of CRISPR-based gene editing—rather than from answering existing questions. Trending: This Jeff Bezos-backed startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with minimum investments as low as $100. Wolf also questioned how AI performance is measured today. In his blog post, he pointed to benchmarks like Humanity's Last Exam or Frontier Math, which test how well AI models can answer complex but well-defined questions. "These are exactly the kinds of exams where I excelled," Wolf wrote, referencing his academic background. "But real scientific breakthroughs come not from answering known questions, but from asking challenging new ones and questioning previous ideas." He argued that AI needs to demonstrate the ability to challenge its training data, take counterfactual approaches, and identify new research directions from incomplete information. Using the board game Go as an analogy, Wolf said the landmark 2016 victory of DeepMind's AlphaGo over world champions made headlines but was not revolutionary. "Move 37, while impressive, is still essentially a straight-A student answer to the question posed by the rules of the game of Go," he wrote in his blog. "An Einstein-level breakthrough in Go would involve inventing the rules of Go itself." Hugging Face is a prominent open-source platform in the AI community, known for its collaborative development of open-source machine learning models and tools. The company is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital, and it plays a leading role in developing transparent and accessible AI systems. Wolf concluded that while current models are useful as assistants, true scientific progress requires a different kind of intelligence—one that can formulate disruptive questions rather than repeat what is already known. See Next: $100k in assets? Maximize your retirement and cut down on taxes: Schedule your free call with a financial advisor to start your financial journey – no cost, no obligation. Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $100. UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET (GOOG): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Hugging Face Co-Founder Challenges AI Optimists: 'Models Can't Ask Original Scientific Questions' originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hugging Face Co-Founder Challenges AI Optimists: 'Models Can't Ask Original Scientific Questions'
Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer at Hugging Face, has cast doubt on the belief that current artificial intelligence systems will lead to major scientific breakthroughs. Wolf told Fortune that today's large language models, or LLMs, excel at providing answers but fall short when it comes to formulating original questions. 'In science, asking the question is the hard part,' he said. 'Once the question is asked, often the answer is quite obvious, but the tough part is really asking the question, and models are very bad at asking great questions.' Don't Miss: GoSun's breakthrough rooftop EV charger already has 2,000+ units reserved — become an investor in this $41.3M clean energy brand today. Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential. Wolf's comments were in response to a blog post by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who argues that artificial intelligence could compress a century's worth of scientific breakthroughs into just a few years. Wolf said he initially found the post compelling but became skeptical after rereading. 'It was saying AI is going to solve cancer, and it's going to solve mental health problems—it's going to even bring peace into the world. But then I read it again and realized there's something that sounds very wrong about it, and I don't believe that,' he told Fortune. San Francisco-based Anthropic is backed by tech giants, including Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)), and is also known for its Claude family of AI models. For Wolf, the core issue lies in how LLMs are trained. In another blog post, Wolf argues that today's AI systems are built to predict likely outcomes, act as "yes-men on servers," capable of mimicking human responses but incapable of challenging assumptions or generating original ideas. "To create an Einstein in a data center, we don't just need a system that knows all the answers, but rather one that can ask questions nobody else has thought of or dared to ask," Wolf wrote. He cited that real scientific progress often comes from paradigm shifts—like Copernicus proposing heliocentrism or the invention of CRISPR-based gene editing—rather than from answering existing questions. Trending: This Jeff Bezos-backed startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with minimum investments as low as $100. Wolf also questioned how AI performance is measured today. In his blog post, he pointed to benchmarks like Humanity's Last Exam or Frontier Math, which test how well AI models can answer complex but well-defined questions. "These are exactly the kinds of exams where I excelled," Wolf wrote, referencing his academic background. "But real scientific breakthroughs come not from answering known questions, but from asking challenging new ones and questioning previous ideas." He argued that AI needs to demonstrate the ability to challenge its training data, take counterfactual approaches, and identify new research directions from incomplete information. Using the board game Go as an analogy, Wolf said the landmark 2016 victory of DeepMind's AlphaGo over world champions made headlines but was not revolutionary. "Move 37, while impressive, is still essentially a straight-A student answer to the question posed by the rules of the game of Go," he wrote in his blog. "An Einstein-level breakthrough in Go would involve inventing the rules of Go itself." Hugging Face is a prominent open-source platform in the AI community, known for its collaborative development of open-source machine learning models and tools. The company is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital, and it plays a leading role in developing transparent and accessible AI systems. Wolf concluded that while current models are useful as assistants, true scientific progress requires a different kind of intelligence—one that can formulate disruptive questions rather than repeat what is already known. See Next: $100k in assets? Maximize your retirement and cut down on taxes: Schedule your free call with a financial advisor to start your financial journey – no cost, no obligation. Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $100. UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET (GOOG): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Hugging Face Co-Founder Challenges AI Optimists: 'Models Can't Ask Original Scientific Questions' originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Inicia sesión para acceder a tu portafolio Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información Se produjo un error al recuperar la información
Times
21-06-2025
- Health
- Times
I have motor neurone disease — and the fund to find a breakthrough
Tris Dyson knew something was wrong in June 2022 when he could not move his left thumb. Six months later, aged just 44 and with a baby daughter, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND). The muscles in his body were dying and he would, sooner or later, lose the ability to walk, speak and breathe. 'I was newly engaged. I'd bought a house. Things were going quite well. So to be told the party's over was not brilliant,' recalls Dyson. Today he considers himself 'one of the lucky unlucky ones' as his physical decline is 'relatively slow'. Having being told he had four years to live, Dyson said he is in 'pretty good shape', and thinks the doctor's prediction was wrong. Since his diagnosis, Dyson, now 46, has focused his energies on his day job, which just happens to be organising multimillion-pound prizes for scientific breakthroughs. He is managing director of the Longitude Prize, which was established in 2014 as modern-day version of the original Longitude Prize of 1714. The original prize sought reliable ways of measuring longitude at sea, and it took nearly 50 years to be solved. The modern-day version has run two awards so far: the first, in 2014, to tackle antimicrobial resistance, and the second, launched in 2022, seeks treatments for Alzheimer's. Now, the next prize will target MND; specifically amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common type, which is the one that Dyson suffers from. On Wednesday, Dyson's organisation, Challenge Works, a subsidiary of Nesta, the UK scientific foundation, will launch a £7.5 million Longitude Prize to find a treatment for ALS. For the next five months, Dyson will seek applications from medical researchers and AI experts all over the world before drawing up a shortlist of 20 teams. These will be whittled down in stages, with tranches of money doled out at each step. 'Prizes are very good when you've got a problem and you don't know where the solutions are going to come from,' Dyson says. 'You award on the basis of success.' The winning team will receive £1 million at the end of the challenge. Dyson hopes other investors or private companies will support the prize over time, offering computational power, for example, to run AI calculations. After that, the aim would be for a big pharmaceutical company to take the research and develop a drug: 'We need to feed them with high-potential, credible targets.' Pharma companies would have 'a huge market, potentially', he says. MND is not as rare as you may think. 'About one in 300 people will get it,' Dyson says. 'It's absolutely extraordinary. But often it appears when somebody is very old and it's part of the end-of-life process.' The Motor Neurone Disease Association estimates that it affects up to 5,000 adults in the UK at any one time. • MND sufferer records voice bank so she can swear at her husband MND is characterised by a breakdown in communication between nerve cells called motor neurones and the body's muscles, with the muscles weakening and wasting away, leading to paralysis. The progress of the disease varies from person to person, with only very limited treatments available and no cure. It is more likely to affect people aged over 50. There is no clear cause for MND, although genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a part. About one in ten people may have a family history which makes them more prone to the disease. Dyson believes there now is an opportune moment to tackle MND because of leaps in our understanding of genomics, and the rise of AI, which can sift through big data to find targets for drugs. Until now, he says, research has been limited and diagnosis is still pretty much the same as it was 100 years ago. 'What's happened in the last 15 years is the basic level of science has gone from being very little to a strong basic level of understanding,' Dyson says. 'The other thing that's happened is a huge amount of patient data has been collected, which we're making available through this prize.' Most of the money that has gone into studying MND has come from donations of patients' families, he adds, and cases such as that of the rugby league player Rob Burrow have raised its profile. Burrow and his former team-mate helped raise £6.8 million for a MND centre, which will open later this year in Leeds. 'It takes your independence away,' explains Dyson. 'It takes your dignity away. Some people manage to rise above it. Rob Burrow is a good example. It's still an unbelievably horrendous thing. And then you ask what treatments are available. There aren't any, which is an unbelievable thing to be told in this day and age.' Solving MND is not where Dyson expected his career to take him. He is not a scientist or medic by training; he studied Geography at UCL, where I first encountered him as an undergraduate, hanging around the ground floor of Ramsay Hall, a hall of residence in Fitzrovia whose main claim to fame is that the band Coldplay met there. After we graduated, I would see Dyson at various parties over the years. One early initiative was running a local currency scheme in Wales; another involved setting up a 'time credits' scheme across the UK that offered rewards to people who volunteered within a community. 'There was no plan,' Dyson says, looking back on his career, which brought him to Nesta in 2012. He has not, thankfully, lost his sense of humour, and talks calmly about the challenges ahead. 'I've got weakness in my arms. I might struggle to pick that up,' he says, reaching out to lift a jug of water —which he does, successfully. 'I'm OK walking. I have some problems typing.' He has not yet moved out of his home in Greenwich, southeast London, which has four flights of stairs, because he does not want to 'inconvenience' his partner, Jenny, and their daughter, now three. 'I'm putting money aside for my family. More than I would otherwise.' The unspoken question, of course, is whether Dyson will live to see the fruits of the prize he has founded. How does he look to the future? 'I'm not thinking too much about that,' he says. 'I think Stephen Hawking was like this. He just ignored it.' Hawking was diagnosed at 21 and died at the age of 76. What does he want people to know about MND, and his prize fund? Dyson pauses. 'We have to bring the timeframe of a treatment forward with this prize. I want people to believe it's solvable, and I think that's true.'
