{"id":212472,"date":"2026-02-11T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/how-computers-powered-by-light-could-help-with-ais-energy-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T19:35:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T00:35:22","slug":"how-computers-powered-by-light-could-help-with-ais-energy-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/how-computers-powered-by-light-could-help-with-ais-energy-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"How Computers Powered by Light Could Help With AI’s Energy Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Computers Powered by Light Could Help With AI’s Energy Problem<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/how-computers-powered-by-light-could-help-ais-energy-problem\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-11 19:29:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.cnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Computers that use light instead of circuits to run calculations may sound like a plot point from a Star Trek episode, but researchers have been working on this novel approach to computing for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They’re called optical computers, and labs around the world have been exploring how they might be useful in everyday life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, a team of researchers from Penn State published a paper in the journal Science Advances that examines how optical computing could reduce the power consumption of artificial intelligence systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Xingjie Ni, an engineering professor at Penn State and one of the paper’s authors, told CNET that the work is a proof of concept for how optical computing could benefit the fast-growing AI industry in the future.<\/p>\n

\"AI <\/p>\n

“Sometimes progress comes from rethinking familiar physics with a new goal,” Ni said. “By revisiting classic ideas in optics through the lens of modern AI challenges, we can open up practical new directions for faster, greener computing hardware.”<\/p>\n

Powering AI<\/h2>\n

As AI is increasingly adopted for work and home use, the issue of AI’s energy costs is pertinent. So much computing power is required to run AI products and services like ChatGPT, and a lot of energy is consumed in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You may live in or near a town where a tech company is planning to build a data center, or your monthly utility bill could increase due to higher demand on the local power grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers accounted for about 1.5% of global energy consumption in 2024 and that this figure increased 12% per year in the five years prior. The IEA also estimates\u00a0that data center energy use could double by 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s why using an alternative computational method to reduce the power AI consumes is an attractive prospect. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Light speed<\/h2>\n

Optical computers — computers that use light instead of electricity — still mostly exist in the tech industry’s moonshot category, where they’re years away from commercial use. They’ve…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Computers Powered by Light Could Help With AI’s Energy Problem https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/how-computers-powered-by-light-could-help-ais-energy-problem\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-11…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/23e9fc82b51dbba26a3d7d54f057817d46eb8c11\/hub\/2026\/02\/11\/998c0601-d648-433e-b90d-0cc09ac4be26\/img-0981.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-212472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212474,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212472\/revisions\/212474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}