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Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

theguardian.com

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Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#101

Post by fsloth »

zaph0d_ wrote: post #74
amelius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a stupid question, but why can't the whole experiment be run as a simulation?

Even if this would be the dream of a lot of theoretical physicists to replace experiments with simulations, this must not happen! Ever! Even if every complex system in the world could be simulated in reasonable time it would still require experiments to verify or falsify the simulation results. A simulation is essentially just a calculation from a model someone came up with to describe a system. In order to check how…

Thanks, this is the best HN 'rant for the common sense' in a long time :)

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#102

Post by markvdb »

siscia wrote: post #34

I do have a naive question. Suppose a big breakthrough comes out of a private company, and such innovation is necessary to use nuclear fusion. The company will be free to do whatever it pleases with the technology or it will somehow "force" to let other use, maybe behind the payment of some royalties.

A related economics question, a thought experiment really...

Suppose a private company manages to lower the cost of electric energy by 90%, using a device self produced fast with virtually no capex. From an economics point of view, they build free money printing presses, essentially.

How would they benefit from this the most possible? Selling the energy? At what price? Take over sectors of the economy where electric price generates most added value? Aluminium production? Data centers? ...

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#103

Post by regularfry »

noobermin wrote: post #67
abefetterman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically nobody was using automated gradient descent / etc because of the proclivity of these algorithms to get stuck on a boundary. The problem is the boundaries are not well defined. One example might be a catastrophic instability. If it gets triggered it has the potential to damage the machine. But the exact parameters in which the instability occurs are not well known. So with this algorithm you mix the best of…

I am still very skeptical that a human is really that good at avoiding the problem areas, although they might be marginally better. Plus, they don't seem to claim that anywhere in the paper, instead, they just rated shots as either "better" or"just as good", ie., a local evaluation which won't let you avoid such areas, which of course is a judgement that requires more knowledge than just the conditions in the neighbo…

Remember that the human won't only be thinking "better" or "just as good". They almost certainly can't avoid thinking "If I say 'better' here, what direction will that drive the algorithm in?" They don't just learn how to drive the plasma, they're learning how to drive Optometrist as well.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#104

Post by regularfry »

euyyn wrote: post #38
pm90 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if it has not been done before, it doesn't look like they're overstating the novelty. Most algorithms look "obvious" in hindsight :).

It's a well-known technique in the out-of-fashion world of knowledge-based systems: To create an expert system, your experts often won't be able to articulate their utility function, so you extract it by presenting them A/B choices.

Doing an old thing on a new problem counts as novel.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#105

Post by MrQuincle »

openasocket wrote: post #27
MrQuincle wrote: post #22

There are two directions within the energy world that I don't completely get. One of them is hydrogen storage, the other nuclear fusion. From what I always understood is that the high-energy neutrons produced by the fusion reaction irradiate the surrounding structure and that there is still considerable nuclear waste (although lifetimes are better than with nuclear fission). Do the scientists not care or is this outd…

You're thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation You need to use materials that stand up well to neutron bombardment. Many materials upon neutron capture have a half life measured in seconds, which isn't a big deal. As nuclear waste disposal goes, this really isn't a concern.

On this EU site they state that a site remains active for 50-100 years, https://www.euro-fusion.org/faq/does-fusion-give-off-radiati....

I know it's better than fission, but still not nice.

If is indeed seconds, then it doesn't matter of course. I was kind of hoping to understand more about material design in the recent scientific past with this question.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#106

Post by dokem »

siscia wrote: post #34

I do have a naive question. Suppose a big breakthrough comes out of a private company, and such innovation is necessary to use nuclear fusion. The company will be free to do whatever it pleases with the technology or it will somehow "force" to let other use, maybe behind the payment of some royalties.

It's worth noting that other countries would be free to copy the technology. At some point the government may intervene.

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#108

Post by Libbum »

marco_salvatori wrote: post #92
abefetterman wrote: post #16

This is actually a really exciting development to me. (Note, what is exciting is the "optometrist algorithm" from the paper [1] not necessarily googles involvement as pitched in the guardian). Typically a day of shots would need to be programmed out in advance, typically scanning over one dimension (out of hundreds) at a time. It would then take at least a week to analyze the results and create an updated research pl…

Though this work may seem exciting, there is an existing, respected body of work available on how to mathematically structure a search over a large parameter space and how to mathematically interpret experimental responses. That body of work is a subset of applied statistics called design of experiments. It helps scientists avoid the common failures that result from doing exactly what was done here, random space expl…

Interesting. Are you able to provide some links to decent resources on this topic?

Re: Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

#109

Post by igravious »

noobermin wrote: post #89
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you meant 6*N? Which is a lot better, but still intractable. And anyway, we don't exactly resolve molecules in e.g. turbulent flow simulations, yet they still take tens, even hundreds of millions of CPU-hours.

6*N, yes. Pretty bad mistake there. But yes, even if you don't model every particle and restrict yourself to "parcels" of fluid like in most simulations, you still have a very difficult problem.

Okay, this is really showing my ignorance but why 6?

You start off with 4 (3 space plus one time (ignoring 11-dimensional space-time)) and add which dimensions exactly? Can the individual interactions between wave/particles be reduced to 2 dimensions? Aren't they going to interact along the whole range of forces they exert: gravitational, weak, electromagnetic, strong?

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