AI is proving to be a useful tool in designing the very computer chips that power AI.

Tech companies are investing heavily in exploring how breakthroughs in AI might streamline the complex process of designing semiconductors and potentially stave off a long-predicted end to Moore’s law—the famous maxim that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every other year.

Researchers at Google’s AI-focused DeepMind arm recently discussed how they are using AI to “accelerate” chip design by fashioning circuits with a structure similar to a neural network and optimizing for speed, energy efficiency, and size with reinforcement learning, or shaping systems by rewarding desired outcomes. Researchers from DeepMind won a programming contest focused on designing smaller chips with this method, and the Wall Street Journal reported in July that the company is exploring how algorithms can help transform the next generation of its own chips.

“Despite five decades of research, chip floorplanning has defied automation, requiring months of intense effort by physical design engineers to produce manufacturable layouts,” DeepMind researchers wrote in a 2021 paper on the topic. “Our method…has the potential to save thousands of hours of human effort for each new generation.”

Keep reading here.—PK

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The retail sector appears to be all-in on generative AI for marketing and sales.

Among 300 global industry executives surveyed by KPMG earlier this year, 70% believed marketing and sales was the business area in which generative AI will have the most “transformational impact,” and 68% said they’re currently exploring AI’s marketing uses. Respondents represented companies making more than $1 billion in revenue across various industries, functions, and markets.

Additionally, 16% of retail execs surveyed said their marketing and sales teams were “leading the generative AI effort,” compared to just 5% of companies in other industries. But the sector might not be moving quite as quickly as others: Only 23% of retail execs said they’d appointed a specific team or person to lead their organization’s generative AI response. That’s compared to 31% of organizations in all sectors.

Keep reading here.—MA

Bots are usually the last thing you want to encounter on a dating app while swiping through endless photos of people standing atop mountains, but Tinder is preparing to harness the power of AI for the good of your profile.

The app, which already uses artificial intelligence in its matching algorithms, has started testing new customer-facing tools. One sifts through your photos and selects the best five to display (hopefully with the good sense to avoid the ambiguous group shot), addressing a pain point where many users get flustered when building their profile.

It’s just the beginning of the AI dating revolution.

Keep reading here.—AR

Stat: 75%. That’s the decline in the number of undergraduates majoring in petroleum engineering since 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a Texas Tech professor.

Quote: “There’s nothing like a human to find the blind spots and the unknown unknowns.”—Alex Levinson, Scale AI’s head of security, to the Washington Post in a story about “red teams,” or groups of hackers who aim to figure out what can “make AI go rogue”

Read: Apps are rushing to add AI. Is any of it useful? (Wired)