By Jeffrey Dastin <\/p>\n
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 25 (Reuters) – A research duo, once pitched to lead the Jeff Bezos-<\/a>backed Project Prometheus, on Tuesday unveiled what they’ve built on their own: an AI<\/a> model that can take in and produce information so vast that a lone computer might not handle it. <\/p>\n Their company, Accelerated Understanding Inc, says it has developed \u200ca different type of AI model that in tests handled 5 trillion pieces of data in a single prompt. That is some 5 million times the size of what Anthropic \u200cand Google’s flagship models can typically consume \u2014 like reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” not once but 5 million times in one sitting. <\/p>\n The difference is that this new system is not built for understanding language. It is built for physics, said co-founders Anima Anandkumar \u200band Benedikt Jenik, in an exclusive interview ahead of Tuesday’s corporate launch. <\/p>\n While systems like ChatGPT were created with the world’s text data, letting them predict the right next word in a sentence when talking to users, this alternative AI has learned to predict physical phenomena in space and time. It dispensed with the Google-invented Transformer architecture \u2014 the “T” in ChatGPT \u2014 and instead processes physics data based on technology that Anandkumar helped pioneer years ago, called neural operators. <\/p>\n “The language-centric view of intelligence is humans at the center. Putting physics at the center is a nature-centric view,” said Anandkumar, a Caltech professor of computing and mathematical sciences. <\/p>\n Various companies, including startups overseen \u200cby AI leaders Yann LeCun and Fei-Fei Li, are pursuing so-called world \u2060models that understand spatial reality better than AI trained on text. Accelerated Understanding’s bet is that a more generally capable form of neural operator that predicts phenomena even the eye can’t see is the best path \u2014 and can boost business. <\/p>\n One example is in chip design. While various companies are using AI that programs computers \u2060and reasons through text for semiconductor applications, Accelerated Understanding believes that a more intrinsic grasp of physics is key to optimizing materials and temperatures for a chip’s performance, with less trial and error in a lab. <\/p>\n The company also thinks the same AI can power robotics, predict extreme weather, or sift through geological data for energy companies. Instead of brittle and bespoke math models for each, one AI can handle any physics query for the business \u200bworld, \u200bAnandkumar said. <\/p>\n The company is focused on enterprise deals rather than a consumer offering to start, the co-founders said. <\/p>\n Story Continues <\/p>\n BEZOS-BACKED OFFER <\/p>\n A \u200bsimilar idea has interested some in the business world, including Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire \u200cfounder. <\/p>\n Over dinner at an upscale restaurant in greater Los Angeles in late 2024, an investor and biotech entrepreneur named Vik Bajaj \u2014 who would go on to co-found Prometheus with Bezos \u2014 discussed a collaboration with Anandkumar and Jenik, according to meeting records seen by Reuters. <\/p>\n