World's First Carbon-14 Diamond Battery, DeepMind's Genie 2, and Amazon's AI Mega-Computer
Dec 8, 2024
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Discover a groundbreaking diamond battery powered by carbon-14, promising thousands of years of energy for crucial applications like medical implants and spacecraft. Explore DeepMind's Genie 2, capable of transforming text and sketches into interactive 3D worlds, although it has some limitations. Lastly, learn about Amazon's ambitious Ultracluster initiative, a supercomputer project boosted by an $8 billion investment, aimed at revolutionizing AI training and challenging existing competition in the tech landscape.
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Quick takeaways
The newly developed carbon-14 diamond battery offers a long-lasting energy solution for critical applications but faces manufacturing and cost challenges.
DeepMind's Genie 2 enables the creation of interactive 3D environments from various inputs, though its current use is limited by short interaction periods.
Deep dives
Revolutionary Long-Lasting Battery Technology
Researchers have developed a groundbreaking battery utilizing the radioactive decay of carbon-14, encased in a diamond structure to harness energy efficiently. This innovative design promises to power devices like medical implants and spacecraft for decades without the need for replacement, making it ideal for extreme environments where conventional batteries would fail. Concerns about safety are addressed by the diamond casing, which effectively contains the radioactive material and ensures radiation levels remain lower than everyday background exposure. However, challenges remain, such as complex manufacturing processes and high production costs compared to traditional battery technologies, making this technology suitable for specific critical applications rather than mass-market consumer use.
Advancements in AI with Genie2 and UltraCluster
DeepMind's new AI system, Genie2, can transform various inputs into immersive 3D environments, showcasing potential in gaming, virtual reality, and robotics. While it features impressive realism in physics simulations, the current limitation is the brief interactivity period, which restricts its application. Additionally, Amazon Web Services is developing the UltraCluster, a powerful AI supercomputer aimed at enhancing AI model training with significant cost reductions and advancements in capabilities. This strategic collaboration with Anthropic not only positions them as competitors in the AI industry but also threatens the dominance of existing players like NVIDIA, emphasizing the ongoing competition in AI infrastructure and development.
In this episode of Discover Daily, we explore groundbreaking developments in battery technology as researchers from the University of Bristol and UK Atomic Energy Authority unveil a revolutionary diamond-encased battery powered by carbon-14 radioactive decay. This innovative power source could last thousands of years, with potential applications in medical implants, spacecraft, and extreme environments where battery replacement is challenging. Despite its promising capabilities, the technology faces manufacturing complexities and high production costs, currently priced at twenty thousand dollars per microwatt.
The episode delves into DeepMind's latest innovation, Genie 2, a foundation world model capable of transforming text prompts and sketches into interactive 3D environments with realistic physics. While this technology shows immense potential for gaming, AI training, and virtual reality applications, it currently has limitations, including a one-minute interaction cap and varying levels of environmental detail compared to manually designed 3D worlds.
We conclude with the announcement of a major collaboration between Amazon Web Services and Anthropic to develop the Ultracluster, a revolutionary AI supercomputer utilizing hundreds of thousands of Trainium2 chips. This ambitious project, backed by an $8 billion investment from Amazon, aims to be five times more powerful than Anthropic's current training systems and could reduce AI model training costs by up to 40%, potentially disrupting Nvidia's dominance in the AI chip market.
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