This Chip for AI Works Using Light, Not Electrons

As demand for artificial intelligence grows, so does hunger for the computer power needed to keep AI running. Lightmatter, a startup born at MIT, is betting that AI's voracious hunger will spawn demand for a fundamentally different kind of computer chip--one that uses light to perform key calculations. "Either we invent new kinds of computers to continue," says Lightmatter CEO Nick Harris, "or AI slows down." Conventional computer chips work by using transistors to control the flow of electrons through a semiconductor. By reducing information to a series of 1s and 0s, these chips can perform a wide array of logical operations, and power complex software.