Scientists at Princeton University have developed an AI model that can predict and prevent plasma instabilities, a major hurdle in achieving practical fusion energy.
Key points:
- Problem: Plasma escaping containment in donut-shaped tokamak reactors disrupts fusion reactions and damages equipment.
- Solution: AI model predicts instabilities 300 milliseconds before they happen, allowing for adjustments to keep plasma contained.
- Significance: This is the first time AI has been used to proactively prevent tearing instabilities in fusion experiments.
- Future: Researchers hope to refine the model for other reactors and optimize fusion reactions.
I’ve lost track, is AI a good thing today or a bad thing?
AI is just the name that journalists use for all algorithms these days.
Although it’s been used for a fairly wide array of algorithms for decades. Everything from alpha-beta tree search to k-nearest-neighbors to decision forests to neural nets are considered AI.
Edit: The paper is called
Avoiding fusion plasma tearing instability with deep reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning and deep neural nets are buzzwordy these days, but neural nets have been an AI thing for decades and decades.
AI is just the tool. Its not good or bad by itself.
Its a tool, it can be used for both. Just like any other tool, a hammer for example. Excellent killing weapon, but also great for driving nails.
What happens when the AI hallucinates and suddenly needs to Chernobyl the plant to fix a hallucinated emergency?
the reaction stops and there’s no fissile material anywhere.
this is the whole point of fusion. they didn’t have fusion at Chernobyl.
we don’t think you’re some sage for knowing AI can hallucinate, and this isn’t a large language model so hallucinations aren’t even remotely relevant. much like Chernobyl.
Nuclear fusion can’t Chernobyl, even if it were to fuck with the machine and cause it to break, the instant it broke the reaction would stop because it’s not self sustaining without a massive magnetic containment field.
Forgive me if I think any kind of nuclear reaction should not be handled by what we’re calling “AI.” It could hallucinate that it’s winning a game of chess by causing a nuclear blast.
Putting aside your lack of knowledge of nuclear energy and AI systems, do you honestly think scientists are stupid enough to give a non-deterministic system complete control over critical systems? No, they are merely taking suggestions from it, with hard limits on what it can do.
That’s not how AI or nuclear fusion work.
