This Former Intel CEO Wants to Jumpstart Moore’s Law With Light
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is pursuing a new venture aimed at using photonics — light-based computing — to accelerate chip performance and support the growing demands of AI infrastructure. The effort is framed as a way to revive the pace of progress that Moore's Law once promised.
Why this matters: This is mostly a chip story, but it connects to something bigger. AI's appetite for compute keeps growing, and that growth is running into physical limits in conventional silicon. Whoever solves that problem shapes what AI can do next, how much it costs, and who controls it. More powerful chips built faster mean more data processed, more surveillance possible, more decisions handed to automated systems. The people building the hardware are not neutral. They make choices that ripple outward in ways most users never see.
Who should care: AI governance · Lawyers · Administrators · General readers · Policy
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