OpenAI and U.S. National Labs 1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session

OpenAI and the U.S. Department of Energy have launched the "1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session," an event bringing together over 1,000 scientists across nine U.S. national laboratories to use frontier AI models to accelerate scientific discovery. This collaboration aims to strengthen U.S. leadership in AI and ensure future AI systems are developed with the specific needs of the scientific community in mind.

Event Scope and Objectives

The "1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session" is a first-of-its-kind event taking place across nine national laboratories, including Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Idaho, Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge, and Princeton Plasma Physics. The primary goal is to enable researchers to test frontier AI models, specifically OpenAI's o3-mini, against problems in their respective scientific domains.

Researchers are tasked with evaluating model responses and providing feedback to OpenAI to improve future AI systems. The findings from this session will be published in a follow-up report detailing how AI models can be utilized by the scientific community.

Strategic Importance of Public-Private Collaboration

This initiative reflects a broader strategy to maintain U.S. leadership in scientific and technical innovation. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships in driving technological progress.

"One of our country’s greatest assets—and an envy of the world—is the Department of Energy’s network of national laboratories, which for decades have driven breakthroughs in science and technology, strengthened national security, and fueled American prosperity. Like the Manhattan Project, which brought together the world’s best scientists and engineers for a patriotic effort that changed the world, AI development is a race that the United States must win. Today’s collaboration of America’s national labs and technology companies is an important step in our efforts to secure America’s future."

— U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright

"Advancing scientific research is one of the most promising applications of AI. We’re proud to work with the U.S. national labs to put our advanced technology into the hands of our country’s top scientists. OpenAI believes working closely with the U.S. government is essential to unlocking AI’s full potential."

— Greg Brockman, OpenAI President and Co-Founder

Integration with Existing AI Research Partnerships

The Jam Session is part of a series of ongoing collaborations between OpenAI and the U.S. government. These include:

• Reasoning Model Deployment: An agreement to deploy o-series reasoning models to accelerate breakthroughs in fields such as astrophysics, renewable energy, and materials science.
• Bioscientific Research: A partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory specifically focused on studying the safe use of multimodal AI models in laboratory settings to advance bioscientific research.