AI made from a sheet of glass can recognise numbers just by looking

Zongfu Yu at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues have created a glass artificial intelligence that uses light to recognise and distinguish between images. What's more, the glass AI doesn't need to be powered to operate. The proof-of-principle glass AI that Yu's team created can distinguish between handwritten single digit numbers. It can also recognise, in real time, when a number it is presented with changes – for instance, when a 3 is altered to an 8. The AI works by taking advantage of small bubbles deliberately incorporated into the glass, as well as embedded impurities such as graphene. As the light waves reflected off the handwritten numbers pass through the glass AI, they are bent in specific ways by the bubbles and impurities.