AI for Productive Research & Innovation in eLectronics (APRIL) Hub

人工智能（AI）正在经历一个爆炸式增长的时代。随着越来越强大的人工智能代理，如chatGPT，AlphaFold，Gato和DALL-E，吸引了公众的想象力，人工智能对现代社会的潜在影响越来越清晰。APRIL是一个旨在将人工智能的好处带给英国电子行业的项目。具体来说，我们渴望开发人工智能工具，以缩短从电子设备的新基础材料到复杂的微芯片设计和系统架构的开发时间，从而实现更快，更便宜，更环保，更节能的电子产品。想象一下，在未来，极其复杂和错综复杂的材料结构，远比人类单独设计的复杂，通过强大的算法进行优化（例如用于半导体材料的AlphaFold）。或者考虑具有领域专业知识的智能机器（想想在正确的技能环境中训练的类似Gato的系统），日夜试验制造技术以制造完美的电子元件。或者，如果我们有经过训练的算法，通过与工程师用自然语言（比如具有专业知识的聊天GPT）进行交互来设计电路，那会怎么样？类似的评论也可以用于那些负责测试和验证越来越复杂的系统（如移动的手机芯片组或飞机航空电子软件）的最繁琐的系统，或者实际上用于建模和模拟电子设备（两者都可以通过使用半自动AI编码器来实现，如谷歌的“PaLM”模型）。这正是APRIL寻求开发的技术鸡尾酒。在未来，人工智能-凭借其查找相关信息的能力，在指示下执行简单任务以及令人难以置信的速度-将在经验丰富的工程师的监督下运行，以帮助他们创建适合不断增长的需求的电子产品，从低功耗系统到可回收的芯片，再到用于处理最敏感和隐私数据的超安全系统。为了实现这一目标，APRIL汇集了大学，工业和政府机构的大型财团，共同努力开发：i）未来的新技术，ii）使这些技术成为现实的工具，非常重要的是，（三）具备必要技能的人员（用于构建和使用这些新工具），以确保英国在全球电子行业中保持有能力和技术先进的参与者。

Artificial intelligence (AI) is undergoing an era of explosive growth. With increasingly capable AI agents such as chatGPT, AlphaFold, Gato and DALL-E capturing the public imagination, the potential impact of AI on modern society is becoming ever clearer for all to see. APRIL is a project that seeks to bring the benefits of AI to the electronics industry of the UK. Specifically, we aspire developing AI tools for cutting development times for everything from new, fundamental materials for electronic devices to complicated microchip designs and system architectures, leading to faster, cheaper, greener and overall, more power-efficient electronics.Imagine a future where extremely complex and intricate material structures, far more complex than what a human could design alone, are optimised by powerful algorithms (such as an AlphaFold for semiconductor materials). Or consider intelligent machines with domain-specialist knowledge (think of a Gato-like system trained on exactly the right milieu of skills) experimenting day and night with manufacturing techniques to build the perfect electronic components. Or yet what if we had algorithms trained to design circuits by interacting with an engineer in natural language (like a chatGPT with specialist knowledge)? Similar comments could be made about systems that would take care of the most tedious bits of testing and verifying increasingly complex systems such as mobile phone chipsets or aircraft avionics software, or indeed for modelling and simulating electronics (both potentially achievable by using semi-automated AI coders such asGoogle's "PaLM" model). This is precisely the cocktail of technologies that APRIL seeks to develop.In this future, AI - with its capabilities of finding relevant information, performing simple tasks when instructed to do so and its incredible speed - would operate under the supervision of experienced engineers for assisting them in creating electronics suited to an ever-increasing palette of requirements, from low-power systems to chips manufactured to be recyclable to ultra-secure systems for handling the most sensitive and private data. To achieve this, APRIL brings together a large consortium of universities, industry and government bodies, working together to develop: i) the new technologies of the future, ii) the tools that will make these technologies a reality and very importantly, iii) the people with the necessary skills (for building as well as using such new tools) to ensure that the UK remains a capable and technologically advanced player in the global electronics industry.