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How can AI researchers save energy? By going backward

Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.

The first person to study reversible computing was Rolf Landauer, a celebrated physicist at IBM who in the 1960s helped establish the field of information processing. Landauer proved that this is an inescapable fact: No matter how a computer is built, it must give off a certain minimum amount of heat for each bit of information it deletes. And if you run them slowly enough, you might get away with not needing as much cooling, which will let you pile chips closer together to save on space, materials, and time spent shuttling data between them.

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