'Thermodynamic computer' can mimic AI neural networks — using orders of magnitude less energy to generate images

A series of purple vertical cylinders wrapped with pink and blue bands with various colored balls moving across them.

Scientists have built a "thermodynamic computer" that can produce images from random disturbances in data, that is, noise. In doing so, they have mimicked the generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of neural networks — collections of machine learning algorithms modelled on the brain.

Above absolute zero temperatures, the world buzzes with fluctuations in energy called thermal noise that manifests in atoms and molecules jiggling around, atomic-scale flips in direction for the quantum property that confers magnetism, and so on.