DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, has announced a groundbreaking discovery, claiming to have unlocked “800 years’ worth of knowledge” by identifying 2.2 million new crystals. The company revealed that out of these, 380,000 are stable materials with the potential to drive advancements in future technologies, including next-generation computer chips, batteries, and solar panels.
The discovery was made possible through the use of GNoME (Graph Networks for Materials Exploration), a state-of-the-art neural network tool developed by DeepMind. The company emphasized the significance of this breakthrough in a blog post, stating that GNoME has expanded the number of technologically viable materials known to humanity. These newly identified materials could play a crucial role in developing transformative technologies such as superconductors, advanced batteries for electric vehicles, and more.
Amil Merchant and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, representatives of DeepMind, explained in the blog post that GNoME has effectively bypassed centuries of “painstaking experimentation” that would have been required to discover these new materials. The neural network tool demonstrates the potential of using artificial intelligence (AI) to scale up materials discovery processes.
External researchers independently validated DeepMind’s breakthrough by creating 736 of the newly discovered materials. The company envisions that GNoME and other AI tools can revolutionize materials discovery, shaping the future of the field.
DeepMind, originally founded in London in 2010, gained prominence for its AI technology that employs machine learning to tackle complex problems. Acquired by Google in 2014, DeepMind is now a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. The technology developed by DeepMind is already utilized in various real-world applications, showcasing the broad impact of AI advancements.
