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Sandia National Laboratories Develops Generative AI Platform

The laboratory’s employees now have easier access to sensitive unclassified information.

Sandia National Laboratories developed its own generative AI platform for its employees. Credit: SomYuZu/Shutterstock

Sandia National Laboratories has developed its own generative AI platform for its employees. Credit: SomYuZu/Shutterstock

To grant its employees the ability to ask sensitive unclassified questions and receive rapid responses, Sandia National Laboratories developed SandiaAI Chat in May 2024, making it the first facility in the nuclear security enterprise to access a chat-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) system.

The large language model system is uniquely Sandia’s, so questions and answers are not shared with platforms like Microsoft and OpenAI, according to a February 5 Sandia press release. Since only Sandia has access to the data shared via SandiaAI Chat, sensitive data can be shared, but SandiaAI can’t learn from the internet or from previous questions.

Erica Grong, who oversaw the risk management of the project, said the SandiaAI team was one of the first institutions to follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI risk management framework.

According to the press release, Sandia’s cybersecurity team tested the generative AI system, making sure to monitor potential abuse of the system and filter content. Sandia’s information technology team checks questions that are flagged for abuse, but the team has only reported false positives so far.

According to Grong, Sandia employees have said that SandiaAI has saved them time on certain tasks. For example, SandiaAI has been used to craft emails and assist with performance management forms.

Brian Sims, the technical lead for the SandiaAI Chat project, said nearly every Sandia employee or contractor has used the generative AI platform at least once.

As for the future of Sandia’s generative AI platform, the team is working toward adding the ability for employees to upload files that can be analyzed. SandiaAI can then perform trend analysis, such as identifying trends in expense reports. The team is also hoping to develop an image generator function.

“There are so many neat things that are taking place around this technology,” Sims said in the release. “The next couple of years are going to be fascinating to watch. What we think of as black magic right now is going to be crude compared to what we’ll see in the next couple of years.”