Energy Department scientists participate in 'AI Jam' with OpenAI, Anthropic

Nearly 1,000 scientists from multiple U.S. National Laboratories gathered Friday to test artificial intelligence (AI) models from leading firms like OpenAI and Anthropic in an effort to harness the advancing technology for science and national security purposes.

The event, dubbed "1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session," involved nine national labs from across the country in what OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, called "a first-of-its-kind" event.

OpenAI organized the event as part of its ongoing collaboration with the Department of Energy, which was announced nearly a month ago by CEO and co-founder Sam Altman at an event in Washington.

Part of the testing included on OpenAI's o3-mini, launched late last month.

OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman said the advancing of scientific research is "one of the most promising applications of AI."

Multiple AI firms participated in the event Friday, including Anthropic, which launched its Claude 3.7 Sonnet model this week.

Anthropic said the model, which is being tested by scientists at the AI Jam, is the industry's first "hybrid AI reasoning model," meaning it can provide quick responses or extended, more detailed answers with more "thinking" time.

Scientists were expected to test a variety of Claude's capabilities, including experiment planning, problem understanding, literature search, code generation and result analysis, the AI company said in a blog post Friday. The researchers will use real-world issue areas related to their respective fields.

"AI has the potential to dramatically accelerate scientific discovery and technological development, compressing decades of scientific progress into just a few years," Anthropic wrote in the post.

"Through initiatives like the AI Jam session, we are demonstrating how industry and government can work together to harness AI’s transformative potential while addressing potential risks through rigorous testing," the post added.

Anthropic also has an existing partnership with the DOE including the National Nuclear Security Administration. The firm collaborated with the agencies last April to evaluate a model in a classified environment to evaluate how large language models can contribute or help national security risks in the nuclear space.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who joined Brockman at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Friday, compared the collaboration to the Manhattan Project, writing, "AI development is a race that the United States must win."

The event comes just weeks after OpenAI launched a new version of its popular ChatGPT model specifically tailored to government agencies and workers. Under ChatGPT Gov, federal agencies will have access to OpenAI’s top models even when dealing with sensitive information.

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