Illustrating the materiality of AI

The physical materials involved in designing, producing, and running artificially intelligent systems are all too frequently largely absent from discussions of AI itself. As a result, the implications of AI's intense materiality continue to be overlooked and unremedied. By picturing the physicality of artificial intelligence within the Better Images of AI repository, with the contributions of Catherine Breslin and Fritzchens Fritz, we hope to foster more accurate representations of these emerging technologies. Silicon is a crucial component of AI manufacture. A block like the one pictured here would be sliced into 12 inch diameter wafers to form the base of CPUs.