Issue: ORN-2026-21

Argonne launches high-performance computing-backed AI research service: Argonne National Laboratory announced on Tuesday that it launched a new platform to offer researchers access to various artificial intelligence models, the latest move supporting the Department of Energy’s mission to spur advanced research and innovation in AI. The lab is deploying an AI inference service — a cloud-like offering that is designed to analyze data, make connections and supply predictions — to facilitate scientific access to leading AI models. The service will provide an array of large language models and scientific foundation models to users in the national lab apparatus.  “Our inference service helps close the gap between developing AI models and putting them to work in scientific research,” Michael Papka, the director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, said in a press release. “By offering AI inference as a shared resource, we enable researchers to apply AI at scale to their data, simulations, and experiments, without the burden of building and maintaining their own infrastructure.”

Hardware powering the inference service is headquartered within Argonne. Leveraging the lab’s flagship exascale computer, Aurora, the inference service will also run on Argonne’s NVIDIA DGX A100 cluster, Sophia, along with the ALCF’s SambaNova SN40L chip cluster, Metis. 

The models offered via Argonne’s inference service — which include commercial and in-house options — are pre-trained. Granting researchers facilitated access to powerful, tailored models will help them “spend less time managing models and more time testing hypotheses,” said Venkat Vishwanath, AI and machine learning lead at the ALCF. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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Tech bills of the week: FY27 NDAA tech and cyber measures; modernizing FAA aircraft repair forms; and more: The proposed fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which was released by the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, includes several technology-focused measures that seek to clarify and expand the Pentagon’s use of artificial intelligence tools.  The draft from the panel’s Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation Subcommittee includes provisions that would direct the Pentagon to update its policies on the use of autonomous weapon systems and artificial intelligence-enabled systems that influence operational decisions around the use of force. These changes would be “required to establish risk-informed requirements for approval, oversight, testing, human involvement, auditability, operational use, and rapid revalidation of such systems.”

Another measure calls for the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to develop an “Artificial Intelligence Model Rapid Deployment Framework” for quickly onboarding, securing, authorizing and deploying AI models onto Pentagon enterprise platforms. On the cybersecurity front, the bill includes a provision establishing a departmentwide system for reporting, tracking and remediating AI-related incidents and vulnerabilities arising from the use and development of the technologies. Additionally, the Pentagon would be required to review “and as needed, reorganize” its cybersecurity responsibilities to reduce duplication and improve cyber efforts across the department. More information is posted on the NextGov website.