I’ve suspected for a few years now that optoelectronics is where this is all headed. It’s exciting to watch as important foundations are set on that path, and this was one of them.

  • kromem@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Yes. It’s using light instead of electricity.

    Which has advantages in multiple aspects.

    Pretty much every major technical college’s research/VC groups are making a photonics AI play right now.

    One of the physicists at NIST suggested a few years ago that AGI would only occur in photonic neural networks because of the ability to better model the neuron in light vs electricity.

    ML in particular is a great fit for the quantum effects of light too, given that in-process accuracy doesn’t matter, some degree of jitter is typically desired, and the network is a black box anyways so not being able to observe intermediate processing wouldn’t be a problem.

    This work isn’t really playing with those effects yet (would need entirely new ways of training models), but it’s the fourth the road promise that’s probably the most exciting IMO.