You can turn almost any object into a computer - and it could completely change AI

The latest chip in the iPhone 7 has 3.3 billion transistors packed into a piece of silicon around the size of a small coin. But the trend for smaller, increasingly powerful computers could be coming to an end. Silicon-based chips are rapidly reaching a point at which the laws of physics prevent them being any smaller. There are also some important limitations to what silicon-based devices can do that mean there is a strong argument for looking at other ways to power computers. Perhaps the most well-known alternative researchers are looking at is quantum computers, which manipulate the properties of the chips in a different way to traditional digital machines.