For now, the artificial intelligence tool named Neutron Enterprise is just meant to help workers at the plant navigate extensive technical reports and regulations — millions of pages of intricate documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that go back decades — while they operate and maintain the facility. But Neutron Enterprise’s very existence opens the door to further use of AI at Diablo Canyon or other facilities — a possibility that has some lawmakers and AI experts calling for more guardrails.
It’s just a custom LLM for records management and regulatory compliance. Literally just for paperwork, one of the few things that LLMs are actually good at.
Does anyone read more than the headline? OP even said this in the summary.
I agree with you but you could see the slippery slope with the LLM returning incorrect/hallucinate data in the same way that is happening in the public space. It could be trivial for documentation until you realize the documentation could be critical for some processes.
If you’ve never used a custom LLM or wrapper for regular ol’ ChatGPT, a lot of what it can hallucinate gets stripped out and the entire corpus of data it’s trained on is your data. Even then, the risk is pretty low here. Do you honestly think that a human has never made an error on paperwork?
I do and even contained one do return hallucination or incorrect data. So it depends on the application that you use it. It is for a quick summary / data search why not? But if it is for some operational process that might be problematic.
It depends what purpose that paperwork is intended for.
If the regulatory paperwork it’s managing is designed to influence behaviour, perhaps having an LLM do the work will make it less effective in that regard.
Learning and understanding is hard work. An LLM can’t do that for you.
Sure it can summarise instructions for you to show you what’s more pertinent in a given instance, but is that the same as someone who knows what to do because they’ve been wading around in the logs and regs for the last decade?
It seems like, whether you’re using an LLM to write a business report, or a legal submission, or a SOP for running a nuclear reactor, it can be a great tool but requires high level knowledge on the part of the user to review the output.
As always, there’s a risk that a user just won’t identify a problem in the information produced.
I don’t think this means LLMs should not be used in high risk roles, it just demonstrates the importance of robust policies surrounding their use.
NOOOOOO ITS DOING NUCLEAR PHYSICS!!!111
It’s eating the rods, it’s eating the ions!
I unfortunately don’t can someone explain?
This
Oh shit had already forgotten about this amid so many other scandals. The guy who said this is running the whole of US like a fucking medieval kingdom, another reality slap in the face. At that time I was like, “surely no one right in the mind would vote for this scammer”.
Don’t blame the people who just read the headline.
Blame the people who constantly write misleading headlines.
There is literally no “artificial intelligence” here either.
Everything reminds me of her…
Looks like it’s a bit nippy out there, brrrr.
Lol, in SoCal these are a landmark that most call “the boobs” or “the titties”
I’m shocked!
The LLM told me that control rods were not necessary, so it must be true
Finally we get the sequel to “Chernobyl” … Based in America…
They made the prequel already - wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident.
Can we not have the lying bots teaching people how to run a nuclear plant?
Diablo Canyon
The nuclear power plant run by AI slop is located in a region called “Diablo Canyon”.
Right. We sure this isn’t an Onion article? …actually no, it couldn’t be, The Onion’s writers aren’t that lazy.
Fuckin whatever, I’m done for the night. Gonna head over to Mr. Sandman’s squishy rectangle. …bet you’ll never guess what I’m gonna do there!!
What could possibly go wrong?
The original article at the non-profit website: https://themarkup.org/artificial-intelligence/2025/04/08/for-the-first-time-artificial-intelligence-is-being-used-at-a-nuclear-power-plant-californias-diablo-canyon
to people who say it’s just paperwork or whatever it doesn’t matter: this is how it begins. they’ll save a couple cents here and there and they’ll want to expand this.
Also, it’s not like the paperwork isn’t important.
That’s textbook slippery slope logical fallacy.
Slippery slope arguments aren’t inherently fallicious.
it’s not actually. there’s barely an intermediate step between what’s happening now and what I’m suggesting it will lead to.
this is not “if we allow gay marriage people will start marrying goats”. it’s “if this company is allowed to cut corners here they’ll be cutting corners in other places”. that’s not a slope; it’s literally the next step.
slippery slope fallacy doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to connect A to B.
You may think it’s as plausible as you like. Obviously you do or you wouldn’t have said it. It’s still by definition absolutely a slippery slope logical fallacy. A little will always lead to more, therefore a little is a lot. This is textbook. It has nothing to do with companies, computers, or goats.
this is textbook fallacy fallacy
True, but it you change the argument from “this will happen” to “this with happen more frequently” then it’s still a very reasonable observation.
All predictions in this vein are invalid.
If you want to say “even this little bit is unsettling and we should be on guard for more,” fine.
That’s different from “if you think this is only a small amount you are wrong because a small amount will become a large amount.”
SkyNet is fully operational, operating at 60 teraflops.
Fucking christ…
Dave, I don’t known what to tell you but you can’t come in alright?
One “Oops!” and humanity’s gone for…
