Optical Neural Networks Here

Optics have been making all kinds of advances in recent years, but this is the first time anyone has figured out how to make an optical neural network of any real size. This is sort of lightspeed AI that uses almost no energy, and how good the AI is just depends on how good your design for the neural network is. AI is about crunching the numbers faster, using analog logic, and it just doesn't get any faster than analog optical circuitry without getting into manipulating time itself. Their circuitry requires so little energy to operate you need the latest equipment just to measure.

Like all the advances in thermodynamics and condensed matter physics, this one is obviously closing in on creating a singularity or even a variety of singularities. They've had cheap optical chips and whatnot for quite a while, and connecting the dots this way was the last step they required.