Volume 1 Issue 5, May 2024

The ‘uncanny valley’ has guided robot engineers on the limits of human likeness, yielding design principles to mitigate the risk of creepy robots. Yet unease with advancements in AI has exposed a new ‘uncanny valley of mind’, with researchers now exploring acceptable boundaries on simulating human intelligence, emotion, empathy and creativity.

The inherent differences in epistemologies and research methods in electrical engineering and earth science hinder interdisciplinary collaboration. In the context of climate change, this divide affects the shift towards long-term sustainability in global energy systems, prompting dialogue between the disciplines to enable effective interdisciplinary collaborations.

Bias and distrust in medicine have been perpetuated by the misuse of medical equations, algorithms and devices. Artificial intelligence (AI) can exacerbate these problems. However, AI also has potential to detect, mitigate and remedy the harmful effects of bias to build trust and improve healthcare for everyone.

Current human–machine interfaces for controlling assistive devices fail to offer direct, arbitrary control over multiple degrees of freedom. Based on the implantation and tracking of small magnets in the residual muscles, the myokinetic interface could enable biomimetic, direct, independent and parallel control of artificial limbs.

An article in Nature Machine Intelligence presents a neural signal-based speech decoding framework comprising interchangeable architectures for the electrocorticography decoder and a differentiable speech synthesizer.

An article in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications proposes algorithmic solutions to dynamically optimize MIMO waveforms to minimize or eliminate interference in autonomous machine-to-machine communications.

This Review summarizes latest advancements in memristor-based hardware accelerators, an energy-efficient solution for computing-intensive artificial intelligence algorithms, covering crossbar arrays, peripheral circuits, architectures and software–hardware co-designs. It analyses challenges and pathways for the transition of memristor technology to commercial products.

Since the most advanced nodes in silicon are reaching the limits of planar integration, 2D materials could help to advance the semiconductor industry. With the potential for use in multifunctional chips, 2D materials offer combined logic, memory and sensing in integrated 3D chips.

Magnetoelectric (ME) microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS) are vital for addressing the challenges of the internet of things (IoT) networks in size, energy efficiency and communication. This Review delves into ME materials and M/NEMS for IoT applications, such as sensing and communication technologies.

This Review systematically compares 2DMs and silicon metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors technologies in the integrated circuits engineering process and presents potential solutions for channel, contact and dielectric engineering using 2DM to address the scaling challenges faced by a silicon-based device at the advanced tech node.