AI Discovers New Material That Could Slash Lithium Use In Batteries::Great job, AI! Please don’t kill us.

  • NateNate60@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    89
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    AI Intelligent Humans Who Programmed a Computer Discover New Material That Could Slash Lithium Use in Batteries

    It’s not like they told an AI “Go find a cool new battery material”. This was a targeted, human-led endeavour that used the same computational techniques that scientists have been using for decades. This headline is like saying “Hammer Builds New House”. It wasn’t the hammer. The hammer isn’t intelligent enough to do anything. Intelligent humans merely used it as a tool.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      11 months ago

      The question is, was this comment downvoted by the rubes who love Elon, or the rubes who love AI?

      Trick question, they’re the same rubes!

      • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 months ago

        Like that Optimus robot from Tesla folding laundry, powered by all the new AI neural networks. Turns out it was remote controlled by someone mostly off camera.

  • remotelove@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    11 months ago

    I think I had read somewhere that it was a mix of sodium and lithium that we already knew about. This story is different every time I read it, so who knows?

    With Microsoft’s shitty AI in Windows and on LinkedIn, I guess they just are forcing a win here. Dunno.

    • Markimus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      11 months ago

      It was thought that sodium ions and lithium ions couldn’t be used together in a single solid-state electrolyte system due to their chemical qualities, but the AI system indicated that such a material was possible. When the researchers tested the idea, it turned out to be true.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, that is the exact opposite of an earlier story I read about a week ago or so. I’ll see if I can find it again, but I doubt it.

        They were just narrowing down from a total list of 30 million combinations of different things before AI was applied. The magic was supposed to be about how fast it chewed through the data, not really about the compound itself.

        I could just be getting old and imagining shit. That is also possible.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          It’s perfectly reasonable that today’s ai can give you more options for searching through a huge problem space. It does appear to be a useful tool for some situations

  • Tehhund@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    We call this a “load-bearing could.” Or, “could is doing a lot of work in that sentence.” I mean, sure, it could, in the same sense that angry ticks could fire out of my nipples.

    When AI starts telling us how to efficiently manufacture these new materials, now that would be revolutionary.