Accelerating Frontier AI: The Compute Crisis is a Reinforcement Learning Problem

DeepAI San Francisco An evening on reinforcement learning, compute optimisation, and the economics of frontier AI. Frontier AI has a growing energy and cost problem. Training runs are measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, data centres in gigawatts, and the marginal FLOP is buying less capability gain than it used to. The industry’s default answer has been to spend more - in both capital and energy. This event focuses on a very different approach to the problem: using reinforcement learning to design more efficient infrastructure, execute more efficient training, and squeeze more from the compute we already have, at every layer of the stack. We’ll hear talks describing how RL agents already design chip floorplans, generate and tune GPU kernels, control the cooling of gigawatt-scale AI factories, and how they are now being used to optimise the training process itself. How far can we push these approaches, and where do we go next? As AI systems become increasingly capable of improving themselves - and the infrastructure they run on - what new parts of the stack will they learn to optimise? And how might emerging ideas around continual learning reshape the way we think about efficient foundation model training? These are some of the questions our panelists will debate. Join us at AWS Builder Loft for an evening of talks and debate with researchers and founders applying RL across the compute stack, from silicon to schedulers, followed by a panel debate, and drinks with the RL and frontier AI community. Following our London edition at Amazon's HQ, this is the second event in the DeepAI series. Agenda 5:00 – 5:40 — Doors open, arrivals & refreshments 5:40 – 6:00 — Guest talk I (speaker to be announced) 6:00 – 6:15 — Guest talk II (speaker to be announced) 6:15 – 6:30 — Recurvia: accelerating training with online hyper-parameter control (presentation & demo) 6:30 – 7:00 — Panel discussion. 7:00 – 8:00 — Social hour — refreshments provided by our hosts at AWS Who this is for Researchers and engineers in reinforcement learning, foundation model training, and AI compute infrastructure; and anyone whose GPU bill keeps them up at night. Venue The Loft (AWS Builder Loft), San Francisco. Refreshments kindly provided by Amazon Web Services. NOTE: All attendees MUST bring a valid government-issued ID (e.g. driver's license, passport card, passport) to present at check-in. This is mandatory with no exceptions. Pre-check-in on the AWS Builder Loft event space for smooth check-in: https://events.builder.aws.com/NAOVwB