Scientists create an AI from a sheet of glass

It turns out that you don't need a computer to create an artificial intelligence. In fact, you don't even need electricity. In an extraordinary bit of left-field research, scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found a way to create artificially intelligent glass that can recognize images without any need for sensors, circuits, or even a power source -- and it could one day save your phone's battery life. "We're always thinking about how we provide vision for machines in the future, and imagining application specific, mission-driven technologies," researcher Zongfu Yu said in a press release. In a proof-of-concept study published on Monday in the journal Photonics Research, the researchers describe how they made a sheet of "smart" glass that could identify handwritten digits.