Google DeepMind AI reveals potential for new materials
LONDON: Google DeepMind has used artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the structure of more than 2 million new material s, a breakthrough it said could soon be used to improve real-world technologies. In a research paper published in Science journal Nature on Wednesday, the Alphabet-owned AI firm said almost 400,000 of its hypothetical material designs could soon be produced in lab conditions. Potential applications for the research include the production of better-performing batteries, solar panels and computer chips. The discovery and synthesis of new materials can be a costly and time-consuming process. For example, it took around two decades of research before lithium-ion batteries – today used to power everything from phones and laptops to electric vehicles – were made commercially available. “We're hoping that big improvements in experimentation, autonomous synthesis, and machine learning models will significantly shorten that 10 to 20-year timeli...