Computer & Information Technology

05 May 23

Photonic Chips Curb AI Training’s Energy Appetite

Computer & Information Technology

Processors that use light instead of electricity show promise as a faster and more energy-efficient way to implement AI. So far they’ve only been used to run models that have already been trained, but new research has demonstrated the ability to train AI on an optical chip for the first…

03 May 23

Can AI and fMRI “Hear” Unspoken Thoughts?

Computer & Information Technology

What are the opportunities—and challenges—to be found when AI squares off with functional MRI data? For one, researchers have discovered, reconstructing speech from brain activity seems newly possible—potentially without surgical interventions or other hardware interfaces. The group’s finding, published 1 May in Nature Neuroscience, details the process by which the…

02 May 23

Xerox Donates Legendary PARC Research Center

Computer & Information Technology

Xerox is donating its legendary research lab PARC to the non-profit research institute SRI International. The subsidiary’s pioneering research in the 1970s helped give birth to the era of personal computing, but Xerox says the move will allow it to focus on its core business. The Palo Alto Research Center…

29 Apr 23

Timber! The World’s First Wooden Transistor

Computer & Information Technology

Transistors inside modern computer chips are several nanometers across, and switch on and off at hundreds of gigahertz. Organic electrochemical transistors, made for biodegradable applications, are milimeters in size and switch at kilohertz rates. The world’s first wooden transistor, made by a collaboration of researchers through the Wallenberg Wood Science…

23 Apr 23

Organoid Intelligence: Computing on the Brain

Computer & Information Technology

In parallel with recent developments in machine learning like GPT-4, a group of scientists has recently proposed the use of neural tissue itself, carefully grown to re-create the structures of the animal brain, as a computational substrate. After all, if AI is inspired by neurological systems, what better medium to…

22 Apr 23

Software Detective Debunked Mike Lindell’s Election Fraud Claims

Computer & Information Technology

Robert Zeidman, a software detective who literally wrote the book on looking for evidence of wrongdoing in lines of computer code (The Software IP Detective’s Handbook), was awarded US $5 million on 19 April by an arbitration panel for winning the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge. That is, he debunked a…

20 Apr 23

Industry Out of Phase With Supercomputers

Computer & Information Technology

Technical and economic changes in the semiconductor industry threaten to stifle U.S. development of the next generation of high-performance computers, warns a new report from the National Research Council.With Moore’s Law and the scaling of transistors waning, the industry is turning to chip designs that don’t work for the supercomputing…

19 Apr 23

GPT-4, AGI, and the Hunt for Superintelligence

Computer & Information Technology

For decades, the most exalted goal of artificial intelligence has been the creation of an artificial general intelligence, or AGI, capable of matching or even outperforming human beings on any intellectual task. It’s an ambitious goal long regarded with a mixture of awe and apprehension, because of the likelihood of…

19 Apr 23

Modeling Electric Motors and Drivetrains

Computer & Information Technology

There has been an exponential increase in the demand for electric vehicles, with hybrid and electric cars expected to account for a considerable portion of car sales in the near future. Designing efficient motors is critical for increasing range, reducing battery capacity requirements, and improving power density and costs. Register…

18 Apr 23

Entangled Photons Produced Entirely On-Chip

Computer & Information Technology

Light-based quantum technology could enable virtually unhackable communication networks and computers that can tackle problems that are currently unsolvable. Today, generating exotic quantum states of light requires bulky equipment that limits the scalability of any potential applications. A new device that squeezes all the necessary components onto a chip smaller…