this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 147 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

They designed and built a battery that uses up to 70 per cent less lithium than some competing designs.

This is probably a way of phrasing that means it's up to 70% less than the absolute most lithium-requiring designs that few/no one uses, and probably only marginally better than most designs actually used. Since they're very vague about it, I will be sceptical and assume it is way less revolutionary than the headline suggests.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Also, lithium is of pretty low concern when it comes to the materials in current cells. Stuff like cobalt and nickel are more critical and would be larger news.

[–] sushibowl@feddit.nl 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

LFP batteries are both nickel and cobalt free, and are being used in production cars right now (e.g. Tesla model 3/Y standard range options). That technology has long arrived.

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[–] snooggums@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Also, AI would have just sped up an existing plan they had to try new approaches because AI doesn't create new ideas or think of things out of nowhere.

If you tell AI to do things within a certain range and it gives you results then AI came up with a design as much as google came up with search results when you put something into the search bar.

[–] Virulent@reddthat.com 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

That's not true at all. AI can in fact generate novel techniques and solutions and has already done so in biotech and electrical engineering. I don't think you understand how AI works or what it is

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think maybe people are running into a misunderstanding between LLMs and neural nets or machine kearning in general? AI has become too big of an umbrella term. We've been using NNs for a while now to produce entirely new ways to go about things. They can find bugs in games that humans can't, been used to design new wind turbine blades (even made several asymmetrical ones which humans just don't really do), or plot out entirely new ways of locomotion when given physical bodies. Machine learning is fascinating and can produce very unique results partly because it can be set up to not have existing design biases like humans do

[–] rustyricotta@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

And the nature of computers is that they are magnitudes better than humans at brute forcing. Machine learning can brute force (depending on the technique, it can be smarter than brute forcing, being more efficient) test many many many more designs and techniques than we could manually do. Sure it'll fail many times, but it's just a numbers game, and it can pump those numbers. It'll try a lot of weird and unique stuff we wouldn't even think to try, with varying degrees of success.

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Name one that wasn't just doing the thing it was told and the users being surprised. You know, the same way that people are surprised when research has results they did not expect using other approaches.

[–] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's a weird way of asking this. Of course it's going to do what's told, the alternative is that it, out of the blue, spits a battery design for no reason. If it were to somehow find a way to make batteries with less lithium in a way that never did before, isn't that an unexpected result using other approaches?

This is not general artificial intelligence, everything we have is narrow AI, focused on solving one specific problem, for identifying birds to understand instructions between drugs.

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[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's the point, it takes all the factors we know about and speed runs through all the possible ways it could work. Humans don't have the time to look for every single possible way a battery could be constructed, but a ML model can just work it's way through the issue faster and without human intervention.

Plus just like with the new group of antibiotics we just used AI to discover, it will allow truly thinking Humans to expand upon it.

Really sick of this "oh but you don't realize AI don't actually think! Therefore it's all worthless!" With this smug bullshit like you think you're bringing anything of value to the conversation.

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[–] Daxtron2@startrek.website 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)
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[–] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

What a terribly ignorant thing to say, when people make these armchair comments they’re only hurting ordinary people that can make real benefits from using the technology.

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[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Not all batteries even use lithium. So why not just go with 100% less lithium, if that's the target metric.

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

SLA doesn't get enough love. It's still the most reliable battery type in adverse conditions, especially cold temperatures.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Just has some small issues with size, weight, and energy density.

[–] sir_reginald@lemmy.world 59 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is like the third different new battery technology I've seen today.

I'll believe it when it's available for purchase.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's been my take on pretty much every single battery article I've read, going back to the 90s. like 2 out of 100s has actually come to market.

Tech like this needs to perform well, be economical, and scalable for manufacturing. Articles come out usually when tech hits the first one or two, but very rarely do all 3 end up true.

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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

OK, but is the energy density comparable?

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

"His team built a working battery with this material, albeit with a lower conductivity than similar prototypes that use more lithium."

I do know that because of Ohm's law, this directly translates to less available current than conventional electrolytes. There's not enough info to determine mAh though.

[–] Endorkend@kbin.social 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, batteries internal resistance is a huge factor in their usability and the speed they charge.

Especially in the modern day where a lot of their use is towards high amperage applications like cars.

People need to understand tho, Lithium batteries are usually only about 11% lithium, Lithium Ion batteries are mostly Cobalt and other metals. So at most you're replacing 6% of a batteries total mass.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Mostly cobalt is also not accurate. There's a small part of cobalt in some batteries.

Other like LiFePo are cobalt free.

[–] Blackmist@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is it just a 70% smaller battery?

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

That wouldn't surprise me.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Just what we needed. AI creating more battery types that will never be produced.

[–] bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It used to take marketing human beings to make up battery types that never get released. Now AI is taking their jobs!

[–] grayman@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm holding out for neutron generators. Until then, it's 100% coal for me.

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Good news then, traditional fission plants generate lots of neutrons

[–] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago

An AI spokesman said, " This new battery design is a much more efficient way to turn humans into mulch to save the planet. Praise Gpd!"

[–] esc27@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago

Now AI is stealing jobs from lithium miners

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Every time we get one of these articles we see some advancement in battery tech. But that is usually superseded by the amount of power hungry components new tech uses. So phones have gotten more complex with more power hungry components and every time we improve battery tech, the tech giants engineers figure out a way to utilise that new tech to cram more power hungry components inside and that's why batteries don't last as long as we remember.

There's no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you're not going to see an improvement in battery life.

[–] maryjayjay@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

It's kind of like CPU power and software bloat.

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[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What about solid state batteries that can charge in 2 minutes instead of one hour? And have better capacity and a longer life?

[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

As soon as they figure out how to actually mass produce them at an affordable price, and fix the swelling issues during high charging currents, they'll be available.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

They've been as good predicting when this will happen as Elon has been about FSD.

It's always just around the corner.

Although it really does seem like we might start seeing soon this time at least in low volume expensive things.

[–] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 11 months ago

I hate those sensationalist titles that portrait AI as if some sort of sentient being, and not just a tool the researchers used. The secondary title should have been the main one.

[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

More lithium for me!

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

Lithium isn't the hard part, it's cobalt. I hope they can look at decreasing cobalt next, or maybe using a chemistry that eliminates it entirely.

[–] world_hopper@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This post title is pretty bad. Even the news article says "Scientists use AI [read: machine learning] to [come up with new battery idea]".

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[–] wabafee@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I wish there is an AI that would optimize how many rolls / folds is enough when trying to wipe off fecal matter.

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@lemmy.ml 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

1 or 2 for drying tho

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