The hardware is the software

Jérémie Laydevant; Logan G Wright; Tianyu Wang; Peter L McMahon

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2023.11.004

The hardware is the software

Neuron. 2024 Jan 17;112(2):180-183. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.11.004. Epub 2023 Dec 11.

Authors

Jérémie Laydevant¹, Logan G Wright², Tianyu Wang³, Peter L McMahon⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA; USRA Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA.
² School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA; NTT Physics and Informatics Laboratories, NTT Research, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA 94085, USA; Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
³ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
⁴ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA; Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. Electronic address: pmcmahon@cornell.edu.

PMID: 38086371
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.11.004

Abstract

Human brains and bodies are not hardware running software: the hardware is the software. We reason that because the physics of artificial intelligence hardware and of human biological "hardware" is distinct, neuromorphic engineers need to be selective in the inspiration we take from neuroscience.

MeSH terms

Artificial Intelligence*
Brain
Computers
Humans
Neurosciences*
Software