Google，TAE Technologies和验光师算法 (Google, TAE Technologies and the Optometrist Algorithm)
In Marvel’s comic universe following the end of World War II Howard Stark tries to tap into the energy of the mystical “Tesseract” and develops the arc reactor — a technology he believes to hold the key to unlimited, sustainable energy and would make nuclear energy look like an AAA battery. However, the perfect reactor cannot be built without a certain theoretical element and he lacks the technology to synthesize it.
在第二次世界大战结束后的漫威漫画世界中，霍华德·史塔克(Howard Stark)试图利用神秘的“ Tesseract”的能量并开发电弧React堆，他认为这项技术掌握着无限，可持续能源的关键，并将使核能看起来像就像AAA电池一样。 但是，没有一定的理论要素就无法制造出理想的React堆，而且他缺乏合成它的技术。
In the film “Iron Man”, his son Tony Stark builds a miniature version of the Arc Reactor when held hostage in an Afghan cave to power an electromagnet, which keeps deadly shrapnel from piercing his heart. Even this small reactor has a remarkable output of 3 GJ/s — as much as three times the average energy produced by a nuclear power plant. As the reactor’s waste products threaten to poison him, Tony searches for new elements for the reaction. With the help of his father’s blueprints and the artificial intelligence JARVIS, he succeeds in building the perfect arc reactor and thus initiates the energy revolution [1].
在电影《钢铁侠》中，他的儿子托尼·史塔克(Tony Stark)被绑架在阿富汗的一个山洞中作为人质来制造电磁React堆的微型版本，以为电磁体供电，从而防止致命的弹片刺穿他的心脏。 即使是这个小型React堆，其惊人的输出功率也高达3 GJ / s，这是核电厂平均发电量的三倍之多。 由于React堆的废物威胁要毒死他，托尼正在寻找React的新元素。 在父亲的蓝图和人工智能JARVIS的帮助下，他成功地构建了理想的电弧React堆，从而引发了能源革命[1]。
融合如何运作 (How Fusion Works)
What at first sounds like a far-fetched sci-fi story has its origin in real technical developments — the fusion reactor. Even at the beginning of the atomic age, scientists toyed with the idea of generating electricity through controlled nuclear fusion, but to this day there is still no fusion reactor that generates more energy than it consumes. Now, with the help of supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI), this goal seems to be within reach.
最初听起来像是牵强附会的科幻故事，但它起源于真正的技术发展-聚变React堆。 即使在原子时代开始时，科学家们也想出了通过受控核聚变发电的想法，但是直到今天，仍然没有聚变React堆产生的能量超过其消耗的能量。 现在，借助超级计算机和人工智能(AI)，这个目标似乎可以实现。
Todays nuclear power plants work with nuclear fission — basically an uncontrolled chain reaction that splits heavier elements, like uranium, into smaller ones. The nuclear reaction taking place in fusion reactors works the other way round and is an every-day encounter for us as it forms the basis of how the sun and all the shining stars radiate energy:
当今的核电站利用核裂变进行工作-基本上是不受控制的连锁React，将铀等较重的元素分解为较小的元素。 在聚变React堆中发生的核React是相反的，并且对我们来说是每天都遇到的，因为它构成了太阳和所有闪亮恒星辐射能量的基础：
Two hydrogen isotopes — deuterium and tritium — fuse together under high pressure and enormous temperatures to form a helium nucleus by releasing a neutron. Since the masses of the original products are greater than those of the reaction products, a so-called mass defect is created. Based on Einstein’s famous formula e=mc2 this mass defect is responsible for the subsequent release of energy [2]. A single gram of the fusion fuel theoretically provides as much energy as eleven tons of coal, is almost inexhaustibly available on earth, and produces only short-lived, weakly radiating atomic waste [3] — the (almost) perfect energy source.
氘和tri这两种氢同位素在高压和高温度下融合在一起，通过释放中子形成氦核。 由于原始产物的质量大于React产物的质量，因此产生了所谓的质量缺陷。 根据爱因斯坦著名的公式e = mc2，该质量缺陷负责随后的能量释放[2]。 从理论上说，一克聚变燃料可提供多达11吨煤的能量，在地球上几乎是取之不尽用之不竭，并且仅产生短寿命且辐射微弱的原子废物[3] －(几乎)完美的能源。
So where do things get complicated? In short: In a fusion reactor plasma must be heated to over one hundred million degrees Celsius. And this is where the problems begin, since the particles’ collisions with the reactor walls cool them down immediately and the reaction comes to a quick end. To prevent this the plasma is enclosed by strong magnetic fields, an extremely complex task.
那么，事情在哪里变得复杂？ 简而言之：在聚变React堆中，等离子体必须加热到一亿摄氏度以上。 这就是问题开始的地方，因为粒子与React器壁的碰撞会立即将它们冷却下来，并且React很快就结束了。 为了防止这种情况，等离子体被强磁场包围，这是非常复杂的任务。
Modern fusion reactors have a large number of control parameters that depend to a great extent on the current state of the reactor, e.g. the changing state of the reactor walls. Thus, to generate optimal plasma requires the optimization of hundreds of non-linear and strongly interrelated parameters, which makes manual optimization of individual parameters impossible. So how can suitable parameter configurations be found and the plasma be maintained searing hot for as long as possible in order to create a stable source of energy?
现代聚变React堆具有大量控制参数，这些控制参数在很大程度上取决于React堆的当前状态，例如React堆壁的变化状态。 因此，要生成最佳等离子体，就需要优化数百个非线性且密切相关的参数，这使得无法手动优化单个参数。 那么，如何找到合适的参数配置，并使等离子体保持尽可能长时间的灼热状态，以创建稳定的能源呢？
验光师算法可带来更好的结果 (The optometrist algorithm leads to better results)
To answer this question, the American fusion start-up TAE Technologies has developed the “Optometrist” [4] algorithm in collaboration with tech-giant Google.
为了回答这个问题，美国融合初创公司TAE Technologies与技术巨头Google合作开发了“ Optometrist” [4]算法。
Similar to the way an optician provides a patient with two different lenses and asks which one gives him better vision, “Optometrist” shows a human expert two plasma configurations and their experimental results. The expert must then decide which of the two configurations has produced the better result. Based on these decisions, the algorithm learns to detect hidden patterns between parameters that humans cannot express explicitly. An optimization algorithm uses these patterns to search the high-dimensional parameter space for hard-to-find optima and to propose a new plasma configuration.
类似于配镜师为患者提供两种不同的镜片并询问哪种镜片可以给他带来更好的视力，“验光师”向人类专家展示了两种血浆配置及其实验结果。 然后，专家必须确定两种配置中的哪一种产生了更好的结果。 基于这些决策，该算法将学习检测人类无法明确表达的参数之间的隐藏模式。 优化算法使用这些模式在高维参数空间中搜索难以找到的最优值，并提出新的等离子体配置。
The parameter space of the C2-U reactor from TAE Technologies has over 1000 dimensions — the search for an optimal parameter set is therefore comparable to the figurative needle in a haystack. To evaluate good plasma the duration of a stable state and the temperature of the ions are crucial. Before “Optometrist” joined the party, the plasma typically remained stable for a few milliseconds and the ion temperature decreased over time. With the help of the algorithm the researchers succeeded in discovering a previously unknown plasma behavior in which the temperature of the ions increases rapidly. For the first time ever, it was possible to generate a net heating power — where more energy is generated than consumed — in the fusion reactor. This result is all the more astonishing as the “Optometrist” algorithm only works on the basis of better-bad decisions and has no a priori knowledge of the control of plasma states [5].
TAE Technologies的C2-UReact堆的参数空间具有1000多个尺寸-因此，寻找最佳参数集的过程可与大海捞针中的图形针媲美。 为了评估良好的等离子体，稳定状态的持续时间和离子的温度至关重要。 在“验光师”参加该聚会之前，等离子体通常保持稳定几毫秒，并且离子温度会随时间下降。 在该算法的帮助下，研究人员成功地发现了以前未知的等离子体行为，其中离子的温度Swift升高。 这是有史以来第一次，在聚变React堆中产生净加热功率，即产生的能量多于消耗的能量。 由于“验光师”算法仅在较差的决策基础上工作，并且没有对等离子体状态控制的先验知识，因此这一结果更加令人惊讶。
人工智能推动创新 (Artificial Intelligence enables new innovations)
The case of TAE Technologies and Google shows on the one hand that artificial intelligence can be used very impressively for problems that are unmanageable for humans due to the countless interrelationships of different parameters and the enormous amount of data. On the other hand it also becomes clear that an AI cannot generate knowledge out of nothing. Only through human input the system could learn to acknowledge a suitable plasma state for further reactions. As a matter of fact this property applies to all AI systems, since they are always based on human-generated data. The problem of multidimensional parameter optimization shown here is not only applicable to fusion reactors, but is omnipresent and has various other applications, such as developing new drugs [6], finding influential social media accounts for political campaigns [7] or planning new marine protected areas [8]. AI is therefore most correctly perceived as an enabler allowing us to explore an exciting range of innovations.
TAE Technologies和Google的案例一方面表明，由于不同参数之间无数的相互关系和海量数据，人工智能可以非常有效地用于人类无法解决的问题。 另一方面，也很清楚，人工智能无法无所不能地产生知识。 只有通过人工输入，系统才能学会识别适当的血浆状态以进行进一步的React。 实际上，此属性适用于所有AI系统，因为它们始终基于人类生成的数据。 此处显示的多维参数优化问题不仅适用于聚变React堆，而且无处不在，并具有其他多种应用，例如开发新药[6]，寻找有影响力的社交媒体用于政治活动[7]或计划新的海洋保护领域[8]。 因此，最正确地将人工智能视为使我们能够探索令人兴奋的创新范围的推动力。
融合技术会怎样？ (What happens with fusion technology?)
While the use of sophisticated algorithms brought TAE Technologies an important step forward, there is still a plethora of technological advances needed to ever make a functional nuclear fusion power plant possible. The greatest hope for fusion technology currently lies in the international ITER project [9] — a research reactor to be completed by 2025 at the French nuclear research centre Cadarache. The aim is to prove by 2035 that it is possible to use fusion technology for efficient power generation. A 10-fold increase in the entered heating power needs to be achieved as a major milestone and Artificial intelligence could be of aid by e.g. detecting instabilities in the plasma early on [10].
尽管使用先进的算法使TAE Technologies向前迈出了重要的一步，但仍需要大量技术进步，才能使功能性核聚变电厂成为可能。 目前，对聚变技术的最大希望在于国际ITER项目[9]-一个研究React堆，该React堆将于2025年在法国卡达拉奇核研究中心完成。 目的是证明到2035年，可以将融合技术用于高效发电。 输入的热功率必须达到10倍的增长，这是一个重要的里程碑，而人工智能可以通过例如在早期检测血浆中的不稳定性来提供帮助[10]。
Whilst we sadly can’t wait for Tony Stark to show up and provide us with all the answers to making fusion technology work, we are certainly seeing exciting technological leaps forward right now and a continuously improved understanding of how we efficiently use Artificial Intelligence to solve problems lies at the heart of it.
遗憾的是，我们迫不及待地希望托尼·史塔克(Tony Stark)出现并为我们提供使融合技术发挥作用的所有答案，但我们当然可以看到激动人心的技术飞跃，并且人们对如何有效利用人工智能解决问题的认识不断提高问题是问题的核心。
If you are generally interested in the topic of AI and its practical applications or want to know more about how data-driven solutions can remove existing blockers that keep you from taking your business to the next level then feel free to reach out to me under lucas@unetiq.com
如果您感兴趣的一般AI及其实际应用的主题或想了解更多有关数据驱动的解决方案如何能够删除阻止你把你的业务提升到一个新的水平，然后随意下接触到我现有的拦截卢卡斯@ unetiq.com
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