AI Designed an Alien Chip That Works, But Experts Can't Explain Why

"Humans cannot really understand them." From smartphones to modems to air traffic radar, you'll be hard pressed to find communications infrastructure that doesn't use wireless chips. So far, those chips have been designed by humans — but that might be set to change: an international team of engineering researchers has demonstrated a wild new approach to wireless microchip design powered by AI. The effort, published in the journal Nature, describes how deep learning was used to dream up new chip layouts — and while the chips seem to work, the researchers say they're not entirely sure how. The designs "look randomly shaped," lead researcher Kaushik Sengupta, an electrical engineer at Princeton, told Live Science. "Humans cannot really understand them." Indeed, photos of the chips have a bit of an alien design, as if H.R. Giger's career took a detour into electronics design. That's not entirely surprising; researchers including Harvard's Avi Loeb have suggested that AI could be bette ... Read full article.