The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is shining a brighter spotlight on artificial intelligence by creating the Center for AI @PNNL, but don’t expect the lab’s researchers to build a better chatbot.
Instead, the center is meant to advance AI applications that boost PNNL’s capabilities in its traditional focus areas, including scientific discovery, national security and energy resilience.
“The creation of the Center for AI @PNNL will leverage and amplify these capabilities for even greater impact in service of our nation,” PNNL Director Steven Ashby said today in a news release.
Today’s announcement coincides with the annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, or NeurIPS, which is taking place this week in New Orleans. The center’s creation serves as further evidence that AI tools are rapidly transforming a wide range of scientific and technical fields.
“The time is right for PNNL to focus its AI-related efforts,” said Court Corley, PNNL’s chief scientist for AI and director of the new center. “The field is moving at light speed, and we need to move quickly to keep PNNL at the frontier.”
