AI Designed an Alien Chip That Works, But Experts Can’t Explain Why

From smartphones to modems to air traffic radar, you’ll be hard pressed to find communications infrastructure that doesn’t use wireless chips.

So far, those chips have been designed by humans — but that might be set to change: an international team of engineering researchers has demonstrated a wild new approach to wireless microchip design powered by AI.

The effort, published in the journal Nature, describes how deep learning was used to dream up new chip layouts — and while the chips…