Artificial intelligence chips benefit from a good night's sleep

Artificial neurons are already far more human-like than traditional computers, and now it turns out they might also need sleep to function at their peak. And it's not just a matter of turning them off every now and then – a new study shows that the neurons benefit from exposure to slow-wave signals like those in a sleeping biological brain. Neural networks are made up of artificial neurons, which all signal to each other like real neurons do in a real brain. Commonly used connections are reinforced over time, effectively allowing neural networks to learn on their own. Unlike the sequential processing of traditional computers, neural networks can process different streams of information in parallel, which makes them powerful tools for things like image and speech recognition.