Asimov's robot brains when?

The unusual properties of spin glass enable a form of AI that can recognize objects from partial images much like the brain does and show promise for low-power computing, among other intriguing capabilities.

Spin glasses are a way to think about material structure mathematically. Being free, for the first time, to tweak the interaction within these systems using electron-beam lithography makes it possible to represent a variety of computing problems in spin-glass networks

At the intersection of engineered materials and computation, spin-glass systems are a type of disordered system of nanomagnets arising from random interactions and competition between two types of magnetic order in the material. They exhibit “frustration,” meaning that they don’t settle into a uniformly ordered configuration when their temperature drops, and they possess distinct thermodynamic and dynamic traits that can be harnessed for computing applications.

AI algorithms developed in spin glass would be “messier” than traditional algorithms, Saccone said, but also more flexible for some AI applications.