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from the let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may dept.
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Recently, on a dazzling morning in Palm Springs, California, Vivienne Sze took to a small stage to deliver perhaps the most nerve-racking presentation of her career.
She knew the subject matter inside-out. She was to tell the audience about the chips, being developed in her lab at MIT, that promise to bring powerful artificial intelligence to a multitude of devices where power is limited, beyond the reach of the vast data centers where most AI computations take place. However, the event—and the audience—gave Sze pause.
[...] Newly designed chips, like the ones being developed in Sze's lab, may be crucial to future progress in AI—including stuff like the drones and robots found at MARS. Until now, AI software has largely run on graphical chips, but new hardware could make AI algorithms more powerful, which would unlock new applications. New AI chips could make warehouse robots more common or let smartphones create photo-realistic augmented-reality scenery.
Sze's chips are both extremely efficient and flexible in their design, something that is crucial for a field that's evolving incredibly quickly.
The microchips are designed to squeeze more out of the "deep-learning" AI algorithms that have already turned the world upside down. And in the process, they may inspire those algorithms themselves to evolve. "We need new hardware because Moore's law has slowed down," Sze says, referring to the axiom coined by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that predicted that the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every 18 months—leading to a commensurate performance boost in computer power.
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:09PM (2 children)
This soylent news post could be the turning point ... for clickbait headlines.
But it's probably not.
Seriously... how about:
"MIT researchers design new power efficient microchips optimized for "deep learning" algorithms"
Don't breathlessly report every single incremental step as "This could be the X". If it proves to be the key to the future of AI, let historians label it that way in future. I'm interested in the technological advances for their own sake, I don't need to be hyped that every single one of them "might be the one that changes everything forever". It's just tiresome.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:15PM (1 child)
Replying to self... as if to emphasize my point... TFA states:
So the odds "This chip" is the one is low, and dropping fast. :P
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 11 2019, @08:52PM