Computers that use heat instead of electricity could run efficient AI

A computer that uses heat instead of electricity could run algorithms that power neural networks and artificial intelligence – and tamp down their energy budgets.

“We have things like ChatGPT which can learn very complicated things about language, but it consumes an amount of energy that is absolutely crazy,” says Nicolas Brunner at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Some estimates put ChatGPT’s daily energy consumption on par with more than 30,000 households in the US.

Most modern AI technology …