[HN Gopher] Why National Labs are investing (heavily) in AI
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Why National Labs are investing (heavily) in AI
Author : LAsteNERD
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-05-12 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lanl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lanl.gov)
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| PR in here for sure, but some smart context on the scientific and
| nat security potentional the DOE and National Labs see in AI.
| lp251 wrote:
| wonder if they still train all of their models using Mathematica
| because it was impossible to get pytorch on the classified
| systems
| pphysch wrote:
| AFAIK that was mostly due to a silly detail about MD5 hashing
| being restricted on FIPS compliant systems? Or something like
| that. I'm pretty sure there's an easy workaround(s).
| lp251 wrote:
| there were a bunch of reasons. couldn't bring compiled
| binaries onto the red, so you had to bring the source + all
| deps onto a machine with no external internet.
|
| it was unpleasant.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Just have Hegseth run PyTorch for them
| andy99 wrote:
| The real title is "Q&A with Jason Pruet"
| hbartab wrote:
| > We certainly need to partner with industry. Because they are so
| far ahead and are making such giant investments, that is the only
| possible path.
|
| And therein lies the risk: research labs may become wholly
| dependent on companies whose agendas are fundamentally
| commercial. In exchange for access to compute and frontier
| models, labs may cede control over data, methods, and IP--letting
| private firms quietly extract value from publicly funded
| research. What begins as partnership can end in capture.
| quantified wrote:
| WILL end in capture. Profit demands it.
| hbartab wrote:
| Indeed.
| mdhb wrote:
| This is literally THE scam Elon, Thiel, Sacks and others are
| running as they gut the government.
|
| Sell assets like government real estate to themselves at super
| cheap rates and then set up as many dependencies as they can
| where the government has to buy services from them because they
| have nowhere else to turn.
|
| To give an example this missile dome bullshit they are talking
| about building which is a terrible idea for a bunch of
| reasons.. but there is talks at the moment of having this run
| by a private company who will sell it as a subscription
| service. So in this scenario the US military can't actually
| fire the missiles without the explicit permission of a private
| company.
|
| This AI thing is the same scam.
| hdivider wrote:
| I fail to understand the sentiment here.
|
| This is the _intention_ of tech transfer. To have private-
| sector entities commercialize the R &D.
|
| What is the alternative? National labs and universities can't
| commercialize in the same way, including due to legal
| restrictions at the state and sometimes federal level.
|
| As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair
| and transparent -- and not concentrated in say OpenAI or with
| underhanded kickbacks to government -- commercialization will
| benefit productive applications of AI. All the software we're
| using right now to communicate sits on top of previous,
| successful, federally-funded tech transfer efforts which were
| then commercialized. This is how the system works, how we got
| to this level.
| delusional wrote:
| > As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are
| fair and transparent
|
| I think that's the crux of the guy you're responding to's
| point. He does not believe it will be done fairly and
| transparently, because these AI corporations will have broad
| control over the technology.
| hdivider wrote:
| If so, yes indeed, fair point by him/her. It's up to
| ordinary folks like us to push against unfair tech transfer
| because yes, federal labs and research institutions would
| otherwise provide the incumbents an extreme advantage.
|
| Having been in this world though, I didn't see a reluctance
| in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs with
| companies at any level of scale. From startup to OpenAI to
| defense primes, they're open to all. So part of the
| challenge here is simply engaging capable entrepreneurs to
| go license tech from federal labs, and go create
| competitors for the greedy VC-funded or defense prime
| incumbents.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with
| capable entrepreneurs
|
| My reluctance is when we talk about fraud, waste, and
| corruptions in government, this is where it happens.
|
| The DoD's budget isn't $1T because they are spending
| $900B on the troops. It's $1T because $900B of that ends
| up in the hands of the likes of Lockhead martin and
| Raytheon to build equipment we don't need.
|
| I frankly do not trust "entrepreneurs" to not be greedy
| pigs willing to 100x the cost of anything and everything.
| There are nearly no checks in place to stop that from
| happening.
| lovich wrote:
| Not that it fully takes away from your argument but a lot
| of that high price tag is also due to requiring much
| better controls on material to prevent supply chain
| attacks ala getting beepers with explosives in the hands
| of all your leadership
| cogman10 wrote:
| All the more reason to bring such initiatives inhouse and
| not outsource them.
|
| You can hope that a defense company is doing the right
| things in terms of supply chain attacks, but that's a
| pretty lucrative corner to cut. They'd not even need to
| cut it all the time to reap benefits.
|
| The only other alternative is frequent audits of the
| defense company which is expensive and wouldn't
| necessarily solve the problem.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| R&D results should be buried under a crystal obelisk at the
| bottom of the ocean, to warn to future generations.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > What is the alternative?
|
| Reasonably there should be a two way exchange? It might be
| okay for companies to piggyback on research funds if that
| also means that more research insight enters public
| knowledge.
| rapind wrote:
| I'd be happy if they just paid their fair share of tax and
| stopped acting like they were self-made when they really
| just piggybacked on public funds and research.
|
| There's zero acknowledgment or appreciation of public infra
| and research.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| > research labs may become wholly dependent on companies
|
| They already are. Who provides their computers and operating
| systems? Who provides their HR software? Who provides their
| expensive lab equipment?
|
| Companies are not in some separate realm. They are how our
| society produces goods and services, including the most
| essential ones.
| shagie wrote:
| The point of https://www.nrel.gov/index is to research how to
| do renewable energy. Likewise, the research done by
| https://www.nrel.gov/hpc/about-hpc and its data center
| https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/hpc-data-center is
| to pioneer ways to reuse its waste heat (and better cool
| existing data centers).
|
| I'm kind of disappointed that their dashboard has been moved or
| offline or something for the past few years.
| https://b2510207.smushcdn.com/2510207/wp-content/uploads/202...
| is what it used to look like.
| tantalor wrote:
| I was a bit puzzled what "1663" is. Here's what I found:
|
| > The Lab's science and technology digital magazine presents the
| most significant research initiatives and accomplishments from
| national-security-related programs as well as projects that
| advance the frontiers of basic science. Our name is an homage to
| the Lab's historic role in the nation's service: During World War
| II, all that the outside world knew of the top-secret laboratory
| was the mailing address - P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
|
| https://researchlibrary.lanl.gov/about-the-library/publicati...
| zkmon wrote:
| I like how he says that AI is a general-purpose technology like
| electricity.
| newfocogi wrote:
| Another recent AI article out of LANL:
| https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/1269-earl-lawre...
|
| And discussed on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765207
|
| This does feel like a step change in the rate at which modern AI
| technologies and programs are being pushed out in their PR.
| stonogo wrote:
| The actual reason is "because they're being told to." Before
| that, there was a massive public-cloud push DOE-wide. Nobody
| outside of ASCR is interested in computing, and there's a lot of
| money to be made if you can snag an eternal rent check for
| hosting federal infrastructure.
| senderista wrote:
| Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture
| of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that
| public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
| conradev wrote:
| The DOE has been building supercomputers for a while now:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge_Leadership_Computi...
| godelski wrote:
| Even more importantly, they are GPU based. The US has 3
| exascale computers (out of 3 in the world). I should stress
| that these measurements are based on LINPACK, and are at fp64
| precision. This is quite a different measurement than others
| might be thinking of with recent announcements in AI (which
| are fp8)
|
| https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2024/11/
| candiddevmike wrote:
| How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean
| energy, and then invest in AI?
| ben_w wrote:
| To the extent that further improvements to AI remain
| economically useful, "let's do these other things first"
| means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on
| the AI.
|
| To the extent that further improvements to AI are either
| snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything
| else first is of course the best idea.
|
| Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things
| impressive, it's not at all clear to me that the people
| funding their development will be able to monopolise the
| return on the investment -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus etc.
|
| Also: the way the biggest enthusiasts are talking about the
| sectoral growth and corresponding electrical power
| requirements... well, I agree with the maths for the power if
| I assume the growth, but they're economically unrealistic on
| the timescales they talk about, and that's despite that
| renewables are the fastest %-per-year-growth power sector and
| could plausibly double global electrical production by the
| early 2030s.
| ngangaga wrote:
| Well yes, nationalism will be the dagger in the heart of
| humanity. But AI won't do anything to address this; in
| fact, leaning into the concept of competing rather than
| cooperating economies will accelerate pushing the dagger
| in.
| haswell wrote:
| > _To the extent that further improvements to AI remain
| economically useful, "let's do these other things first"
| means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work
| on the AI._
|
| The major question is: at what point will unaddressed
| climate change nullify these economic gains and make the
| fact that anyone worried about them feel silly in
| retrospect?
|
| Or put another way, will we even have the chance
| collectively enjoy the benefits of that work?
| 85392_school wrote:
| You'd probably meet the talking point that if we don't
| accelerate AI development China will win.
| bcoates wrote:
| 1. Build atomic power plants sufficient to supply electricity
| needs for projected future AI megaprojects
|
| 2. Inevitable AI winter
|
| 3. Keep running the plants, clean energy achieved, stop
| burning coal, global warming solved
| godelski wrote:
| This isn't an "either or" situation. You can do both.
|
| The absolute dollar value might seem high, because we're
| working with the budget of not just a country but the
| wealthiest country, but as a percentage it is quite low. You
| can certainly pull funds from other areas too, like the
| military, which also greatly benefit from such research
| endeavors.
|
| Even if these were exclusively non-weapons and non-military
| based technologies being developed it'd be naive to not
| recognize that the best military defense is to stop a war
| before it happens. That comes through many avenues, but
| notably the development of new technologies, especially those
| that benefit people as a whole (e.g. medicine or see the
| Taiwan strategy). But even then, it would also be naive to
| think that the same technology couldn't be adapted to
| military uses. Anything can be a weapon if you use it wrong
| enough.
|
| But note that we're also seeing a reduction in federal
| research funding. We're also seeing less fundamental research
| and these types of problems need a strong pipeline through
| the classic TRL scale[0]. I think you'll find some of that
| discussion over in yesterday's thread about Bell Labs. The
| pipeline doesn't work if you don't take risks and are
| rushing. You need a fire under your ass but too hot and you
| get burned. It's easy to be myopic in today's settings, and
| that's not a great idea for an organization who needs to have
| an outlook in terms of decades and centuries (i.e.
| government) as opposed to the next election cycle or next
| quarterly earnings report.
|
| Mind you, we've done these things before. Both the Space Race
| and Manhattan Project. At the height of the Space Race NASA's
| budget was over 4.41% of the federal budget[2]. I'm not sure
| what percent the Manhattan Project's budget was, but it is
| very clear that this is _A LOT_ cheaper than what actual war
| costs[3]. We 're talking about less than a month of war
| costs. Remember, we spent over a $750bn over in Iraq[4]. The
| question is not if we have the money, but what we want to
| spend it on. Personally I'd rather stuff like this than
| bombing people. Frankly, you can eat the cake too, as it
| makes it cheaper to bomb people as well...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957010
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Cost
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
| neves wrote:
| What's the Taiwan strategy?
| godelski wrote:
| https://www.tsmc.com/
| babyent wrote:
| I think climate change is legit. But I also think that a lot
| of it is just a mechanism to knee cap other countries from
| progressing. I don't mind, because it keeps us at the top.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Who "we"?
|
| The people qualified to fix global warming aren't the same
| people qualified to work on ML.
| XorNot wrote:
| Don't you know? Humanity can only solve one problem at a
| time in order of importance.
|
| And it's corollary: something being in the news or social
| media means everyone else has stopped working on other
| problems and is now solely working on whatever that
| headline's words say.
| whatever1 wrote:
| This is the plan. Build all the clean infrastructure with the
| fake promise of AI and once the bubble bursts, boom. We have
| spare clean capacity for everyone.
| giardini wrote:
| LLMs seem to be plateauing. I'd rather let the markets chase
| AI.
| quakeguy wrote:
| They should invest in natural intelligence first.
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