Across decades of development, scientists have been pursuing nuclear fusion technology through endless experiments, calculations and simulations, trying to find the optimal mix of conditions for atoms to fuse and continually release huge amounts of energy. The Alphabet-owned company DeepMind has now lent its considerable artificial intelligence know-how to the effort through a new partnership with Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's (EPFL's) Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), where it has already proved its worth.

DeepMind has been making some impressive moves in the world of artificial intelligence over the past few years, beating the world's best players at Go, predicting rainfall with a high-degree of accuracy and even solving a 50-year scientific problem by predicting the 3D structures of unique proteins.

In harnessing the technology for nuclear fusion research, scientists hope to come up with ways to more successfully sustain streams of plasma, enabling more opportunities for critical fusion reactions to occur. The type of device used for these experiments at the SPC is known as a tokamak, which is a donut-shaped chamber that uses a powerful magnetic field to contain streams of super-hot plasma, in which hydrogen atoms fuse into one helium atom and release energy.