Qiangfei Xia, Dev and Linda Gupta Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering

Future Computers Will Be Like the Human Brain

March 27, 2025
4 p.m. at OId Chapel

The upswing of ChatGPT has sparked tremendous interest in artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the computer systems behind these achievements consume as much electricity as a small power plant, and such supercomputers will cause severe issues of energy, environment, and social equity unless we change our current hardware. Cue the human brain: It’s perhaps the world’s most powerful computational system, but we have yet to develop AI systems that can perform simple human-like cognitive functions with the reliability and efficiency of their biological counterparts. Professor Qiangfei Xia will share his research on building brain-inspired computing systems and their applications in machine intelligence. He will also review the evolution of computer hardware and elaborate on the importance of the brain-like computer under the CHIPS and Science Act—the most significant investment in research and development by the U.S. government to date.