[quantadev]

In 25 years we'll have #GlassModels. A "chip", which is a passive device (just a complex lens) made only of glass or graphene, which can do an "AI Inference" simply by shining the "input tokens" thru it. (i.e. arrays of photons). In other words, the "numeric value" at one MLP "neuron input" will be the amplitude of the light (number of simultaneous photons).

All addition, multiplication, and tanh functions will be done by photon superposition/interference effects, and it will consume zero power (since it's only a complex "lens").

It will probably do parallel computations where each photon frequency range will not interfere with other ranges, allowing multiple "inferences" to be "Shining Thru" simultaneously.

This design will completely solve the energy crisis and each inference will take the same time as it takes light to travel a centimeter. i.e. essentially instantaneous.

[gcanyon]

For years I've been fascinated by those little solar-powered calculators. In a weird way, they're devices that enable us to cast hand shadows to do arithmetic.

[quantadev]

Lookup "Analog Optical Computing". There was recently a breakthrough just last week where optical computing researchers were able to use photon interference effects to do mathematical operations purely in analog! That means no 0s and 1s, just pure optics. Paste all that into Gemini to learn more.

[gorkish]

If you contextualize Star Trek's "isolinear chips" to be something like this, they start to seem considerably more sensible.

Has anyone built a physical ASIC that embeds a full model yet?