AI Weekly: AI helps companies design physical products

This week in a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers at Google detailed how they used AI to design the next generation of tensor processing units (TPU), the company's application-specific integrated circuits optimized for AI workloads. While the work wasn't novel -- Google's been refining the technique for the better part of years -- it gave the clearest illustration yet of AI's potential in hardware design. But the Nature paper suggests AI can at the very least augment human designers to accelerate the brainstorming process. Beyond chips, companies like U.S.- and Belgium-based Oqton are applying AI to design domains including additive manufacturing. Oqton's platform automates CNC, metal, and polymer 3D printing and hybrid additive and subtractive workflows, like creating castable jewelry wax.