Penn scientists may have found a way to power future AI with exotic light-matter particles instead of electrons. Eighty years after the debut of ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are exploring a radically different future for computing. Instead of depending entirely on electrons, scientists are now looking to light itself to help power the next generation of artificial intelligence systems. ENIAC, developed by Penn researchers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, launched the era of electronic computing by using electrons to perform complex calculations. Modern computers still rely on the same basic approach today. But as AI systems become larger and more demanding, traditional electronics are beginning to run into serious physical and energy limitations. Why AI Is Pushing Electronics to Their Limits Electrons carry electrical charge, which creates problems as computer chips become more advanced. Moving electrons through materials generates heat and resistance, wasting energy and making systems harder to cool. Those challenges are growing as AI hardware must process and transfer enormous amounts of data. To address these issues, Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen in the School of Arts & Sciences are investigating whether photons, the particles that make up light, can take over some of the work now handled by electrons. “Because they are charge-neutral and have zero rest mass, photons can carry information quickly over long distances with minimal loss, dominating communications technology,” explains Li He, co-first author of a paper published in Physical Review Letters and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Zhen Lab. “But that neutrality means they barely interact with their environment, making them bad at the sort of signal-switching logic that computers depend on.” Light can move information extremely efficiently, but it normally lacks the strong interactions needed for computing operations such as