Neural networks

Brain-inspired Computing Is Ready for the Big Time

February 13, 2025
Computer & Information Technology

Efforts to build brain-inspired computer hardware have been underway for decades, but the field has yet to have its breakout moment. Now, leading researchers say the time is ripe to start building the first large-scale neuromorphic devices that can solve practical problems.The neural networks that have powered recent progress in…

January 15, 2025
Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Universal translators in science fiction, such as the Babel fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, have long offered the dream of instantaneous translation from one spoken language to another. Now, in what may be a key step toward making this fantasy a reality, scientists at Facebook’s parent company…

May 28, 2024
Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

This post was originally published on the author’s personal blog. Last year’s Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) was the biggest CoRL yet, with over 900 attendees, 11 workshops, and almost 200 accepted papers. While there were a lot of cool new ideas (see this great set of notes for an…

12 Apr 24

AI Chip Trims Energy Budget Back by 99+ Percent

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Metallurgy & Material Science

Neural networks that imitate the workings of the human brain now often generate art, power computer vision, and drive many more applications. Now a neural network microchip from China that uses photons instead of electrons, dubbed Taichi, can run AI tasks as well as its electronic counterparts with a thousandth…

29 Mar 24

Will Liquid Circuits Enable Brain-Imitating Computers?

Computer & Information Technology

Liquid circuits that mimic synapses in the brain can for the first time perform the kind of logical operations underlying modern computers, a new study finds. Near-term applications for these devices may include tasks such as image recognition, as well as the kinds of calculations underlying most artificial intelligence systems.Just…

13 Feb 24

Everything You Wanted to Know About 1X’s Latest Video

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Just last month, Oslo, Norway-based 1X (formerly Halodi Robotics) announced a massive $100 million Series B, and clearly they’ve been putting the work in. A new video posted last week shows a [insert collective noun for humanoid robots here] of EVE android-ish mobile manipulators doing a wide variety of tasks…

03 Feb 24

MIT and IBM Find Clever AI Ways Around Brute-Force Math

Computer & Information Technology

Since the days of Isaac Newton, the fundamental laws of nature—optics, acoustics, engineering, electronics—all ultimately reduce to a vital, broad set of equations. Now researchers have found a new way to use brain-inspired neural networks to solve these equations significantly more efficiently than before for numerous potential applications in science…

21 Dec 23

Hydropower and Desalination Could Work Better Together

Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

A greener future requires, in part, more large-scale energy storage systems. The most common system is pumped storage hydropower, in which excess energy is stored by pumping water to a higher elevation and released to drive a turbine when energy demand rises. Pumped storage currently accounts for 96 percent of…

20 Dec 23

Fear’s Neural Hallmarks Make AI Drive More Safely

Civil, Structural & Architecture

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.Driving, say, in the winter or in stormy conditions can induce feelings of fear—and inspire more caution. So could some of the same hallmarks of fear and defensive driving be somehow programmed into a self-driving…

15 Nov 23

Better Machine-Learning Models With Quantum Computers

Computer & Information Technology

Researchers at the quantum-computing company Terra Quantum have demonstrated improved training of machine-learning models by using a new method that combines the best features of classical and quantum computers. These results are a promising sign for the young field of quantum machine learning, which is slow to get off the…

Brain-inspired Computing Is Ready for the Big Time

Meta’s New Translation AI Is Nearly a Babel Fish

Will Scaling Solve Robotics?

AI Chip Trims Energy Budget Back by 99+ Percent

Will Liquid Circuits Enable Brain-Imitating Computers?

Everything You Wanted to Know About 1X’s Latest Video

MIT and IBM Find Clever AI Ways Around Brute-Force Math

Hydropower and Desalination Could Work Better Together

Fear’s Neural Hallmarks Make AI Drive More Safely

Better Machine-Learning Models With Quantum Computers

Google won two major awards at MWC Barcelona 2025.

Expanding AI Overviews and introducing AI Mode

This MRI Can Run on Batteries

The Tiny Star Explosions Powering Moore’s Law