Surely that's exactly what AI is?

"Here's a solution to your problem. It may be right, it may be wrong. The solution may be conceptually right, but the underlying training data wrong, or the other way round. Or I may have just made it up. So anyway, now you can get some real scientists to try and work out whether it's actually a solution, or a mere illusion. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

To be fair, I think that is probably a mis-construal of what MS are suggesting (although it's hard to tell from the article). That is, not asking some LLM "How do I do scalable fusion power?", but rather using ML tools to help with reactor design - modelling complex physical scenarios involving plasma physics, etc. That is not so far-fetched; ML is already starting to be deployed with, as I understand it, some success, in highly complex scenarios such as weather forecasting.

So from the [1]linked article we learn, e.g., that "[ [2]DIII-D researchers] provided examples of how to apply AI [read: ML] to active plasma control to avoid disruptive instabilities, using AI-controlled [read; ML-controlled] trajectories to avoid tearing modes, and implementing feedback control using machine learning-derived density limits for safer high-density operations." ( [3]DIII-D is the largest largest fusion facility in the US.)

And, of course, you'd expect that actual scientists would be the last people to put blind faith in an opaque and inscrutable ML model for real-world deployment of the technology at scale; they would most certainly want to understand why/how a (successful) ML-derived model does what it does; this would be essential (and I imagine highly non-trivial).

Please note that I am not talking AI hype here (nor, I suspect—but could be wrong—are Microsoft); rather, this may well be about a potentially useful application of machine learning in the real world.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/microsoft-fusion-summit-explores-how-ai-can-accelerate-fusion-research/

[2] https://d3dfusion.org/

[3] https://d3dfusion.org/

Listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe and this sounds similar to what they are doing with gravitational wave detectors.

The AI generates designs based on performance targets rather than copying existing designs. All very technical so I may have not followed it wholly

https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-1034

https://scitechdaily.com/when-machines-dream-ai-designs-strange-new-tools-to-listen-to-the-cosmos/

I got a tour of the DIII facility 45 years ago - the rectifier and bus bars for the magnet were very impressive.

"It's sort of foolish to imagine that we'll do fusion by trial and error"

"Surely that's exactly what AI is?"

You may not like this, but it's also what science is. I know this because I am a research scientist. We quite literally try things and make errors. (We do, however, learn from our errors.)

Being wrong in science is highly underrated. Being wrong allows to rule out the stuff that isn't going to work, and thereby nudge you towards being right. There are myriad examples of this in the history of science; e.g. falsification of the "ether" theory in 19th century physics—much derided today, but a plausible contender in its day—pointed the way to the principle of relativity. There are worse things than being wrong in science - in particular, every scientist's worst nightmare: being [1]not even wrong .

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

"You may not like this, but it's also what science is."

You'd better take that up with Sir Simon Cowley, as it was a quote in his name.

I would, but he's not answering the phone.

(It's Sir Steven, BTW - perhaps you were thinking of another Simon Cow....)

Actual intelligence can be powered on tea and hobnobs, so maybe they're trying to solve the wrong problem. If there were such a thing as an enquiring artificial mind, presumably it would want to know.

With all the animated handwaving and flimflam behind the AI mania invariably foisted on us with the imprecation not to look behind the curtain, the fact easily overlooked is that artificial minds enquiring or otherwise simply do not exist and won't conceivably exist in any living person's lifetime.

Nothing even vaguely resembling an artificial brain exists yet outside a few trivial examples.

If the functioning of larger brains in animals were demonstrated to depend on intrinsically quantum effects the production of a true artificial brain would almost certainly depend on the development of seriously large quantum computing which ranks slight below fusion in unachievable milestones.

I suspect communicating with an artificial mind would actually be far more difficult than with a natural extraterrestrial intelligence.

No he won't... he just sits on the couch all day with his hand down his pants...

"Reading" back issues of Big 'Uns

(Fast B)Readers' Wives*

* Yes, that's more of a fission joke, but I couldn't think of one for fusion.

Certainly closer to toxic waste emission than fusion is...

Not unexpectedly Douglas Adams had already covered this part of the terrain of the dystopian future which he was perhaps fortunately not to see.

" If such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do, in order to make one, is to work out how exactly improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on! "

I imagine the fate of the Drive's inventor might also be visited upon most of the AI fraternity with few regrets.

Zaphod Beeblebrox even sporting his extra head wouldn't look particularly out of place on the board of OpenAI or any of its ilk. Indeed his passive (permanently stoned) head definitely C-Suite material.

<...."I imagine the fate of the Drive's inventor might also be visited upon most of the AI fraternity with few regrets.".....>

The fate of his wife might be even better?

AI grifters you mean

Even if we managed to make it work, and even if we had infinite fuel for it, running fusion reactors everywhere on the planet would produce a lot of heat, because in the end quite all energy we produce (well, we actually transform it) becomes heat. And maybe this heat will be enough to actually induce some climate change, even without the greenhouse gases.

Or am I wrong?

> Or am I wrong?

Short answer: yes, you're wrong.

Long answer: the amount of energy humans consume is roughly five orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun. If fusion worked, and then we shifted all energy production to fusion, and then everyone on Earth started consuming at USA-levels, and then everyone for some reason started consuming 10 times that - I don't know, flying cars, whatever - it would still increase Earth temperature by less than what random Sun fluctuations do. All of the scenarios where direct energy release becomes meaningful are so far-fetched as to count as high sci-fi (flying cities, things like that).

Climate change happens because greenhouse effects can trap vast amounts of Sun energy that would otherwise be reflected, and not because of direct energy releases.

The climate change problem is mainly caused by the waste products of how we currently produce energy (mainly CO2), this has a far bigger effect on climate than the waste heat from how the energy is used.

Some of the fusion power could be used to convert the atmospheric CO 2 back into coal which we could bury again. Ultimately we might reduced the greenhouse gases to well below preindustrial level so that much more low grade heat could be radiated into space. Yes and Musk will ace quantum gravity.

Still you are entirely correct. Fusion isn't a magic pudding electric battery you load up with tritium and get electricity out with 100% conversion.

Practical fusion reactors will be incredibly inefficient and produce unwanted waste and contamination unlike Čapek's Karburator which initially appeared to be of the magic pudding variey.

The fusion reactor components will wear out and presumably become quite radioactive which isn't altogether that different from the waste issues current fission reactors face.

Microsoft wants us to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

I am not denying the many potential uses for so-called 'AI'. Yet, it's unclear why there need to be large power-hungry data centres dotted across nations.

Creating new AI models appears to necessitate access to considerable computational power, but nothing on a scale more than many institutions already possess. Also, 'refined' or cut-down variants of newly made, and thoroughly tested, models should percolate downwards among government, business, educational & research institutions, and into private residences, there to be hosted on 'consumer level' equipment. A factory using one or more AIs to handle stock control, assembly lines, and whatever, might experience greater reliability and security by keeping the AIs on its premises; it could/should have secure backups held on premises it owns (one room might suffice) on another site. Additionally, AIs not intended for direct contact with folk offsite ought to have no connection to the public Internet.

Another example is hospitals using AIs as diagnostic aids. Instead of 'all singing, all dancing', and all too fallible, ersatz doctors and technicians, departments should call upon specific models, tailored for particular needs, and hosted on local computers of no greater specification than those required by avid 'gamers'. For instance, 'Radiology and Imaging' departments could host mammographic screening aids to spotting putative lesions, and pathology departments could have AI software tuned to histological examinations.

Similarly, onsite hosted AIs dedicated to literature curation, teaching aids, and administrative tasks could be housed in schools and universities. AIs deployed in these institutions may have demands placed upon them, necessitating 'higher-end equipment' than found in homes, but nothing hugely drawing on electricity.

So, what is the intent of Microsoft and other players in AI development when seeking to build mega-computer-farms? Presumably, it is to offer, via the Internet, services to government, industry, commerce, education, and private users.

It's well understood that the planned computer centres would pose problems for current electrical supply grids. The UK's Mr Starmer has committed (at least until he is ejected from office) to a costly backbone for AI megacentres. Doubtless, unimaginative political figures in other nations think along similar lines.

Computer power for running AI models devolved to work-sites and to homes may be only marginally, at worst, above that at present required. Bear in mind, that small, task-specific, AIs may substitute for some PCs already used for similar purposes. Should overall use in this manner exceed the electrical requirements of proposed mega-centres, demands on power grids would be geographically balanced.

Devolve your 'thinking power' to Microsoft and to similar? Let an horrendously ill-advised demand on electrical power be approved?

Come on Microsoft, don't waste time and energy with "nuclear fusion", go one step further and let AI unriddle the secrets of "Cold Fusion", this for sure will save our world and allow to power-feed even more and bigger AI Datacenters!

On a more practical scale, consider to boost the funding of "classic" nuclear fusion research in a meaningful way. For example: The experimental plasma research stellerator project "Wendelstein 7" started somewhen around end of the 1980s and it's budget has been a meagre 1 billion in those more than 30 years! Hardly an investment in search for success.