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Large language models trained on religious texts claim to offer spiritual insights on demand. What could go wrong?

By Webb Wright

Just before midnight on the first day of Ramadan last year, Raihan Khan—a 20-year-old Muslim student living in Kolkata—announced in a LinkedIn post that he had launched QuranGPT, an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot he had designed to answer questions and provide advice based on Islam’s holiest text. Then he went to sleep. He awoke seven hours later to find it had crashed because of an overflow of traffic. A lot of the comments were positive, but others were not. Some were flat-out threatening.

Large-scale neural network models form the basis of many AI-based technologies such as neuromorphic chips, which are inspired by the human brain. Training these networks can be tedious, time-consuming, and energy-inefficient given that the model is often first trained on a computer and then transferred to the chip. This limits the application and efficiency of neuromorphic chips.

TU/e researchers have solved this problem by developing a neuromorphic device capable of on– that eliminates the need to transfer trained models to the chip. This could open a route toward efficient and dedicated AI chips.

Have you ever thought about how wonderful your brain really is? It’s a powerful computing machine, but it’s also fast, dynamic, adaptable, and very energy efficient.