Called graphical networks for material exploration (GNoME), the technology has already been used to predict structures for 2.2 million new materials, of which more than 700 have gone on to be created in the lab and are now being tested.

According to Nature Today Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced a new autonomous lab. In partnership with DeepMind, the lab takes GNoME's discoveries and uses machine learning and robotic arms to engineer new materials without the help of humans. Google DeepMind says that together, these advancements show the potential of using AI to scale up the discovery and development of new materials.

Materials science boffin Ju Li said that GNoME is the AlphaFold for materials discovery. AlphaFold was a DeepMind AI system announced in 2020, that predicts the structures of proteins with high accuracy and has since advanced biological research and drug discovery.

He said that thanks to GNoME, the number of known stable materials has grown almost tenfold to 421,000.