The clunky mechanism in the video operates an old elevator, but the exact same principles underlie today's most advanced artificial intelligence servers.
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Electric elevators have been around since 1880, long before the development of the advanced chips we have today. Their operation relied on electric current and electromechanical computation performed by logic gates. When the elevator door closed, it closed one electrical circuit; when the user pressed the floor button, a second circuit was closed. These two circuits simultaneously allowed electric current to flow through a third circuit that lifted the elevator to the desired floor.
These logic gates rely on moving physical parts. They use electromagnets to pull a switch and close the circuit. The fact that they are physical means they can only open and close a limited number of times per second.
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Modern processors use the exact same principles. Their logic gates are built from transistors that contain no moving parts, relying instead on changes in their electrical conductivity by controlling the voltage applied to them. This rate of change can reach billions of cycles per second, and it is what allows us to enjoy the rich digital universe we have today. The difference lies not in the basic components of computation, but in the total number of calculations and their speed.
Even artificial intelligence servers, the most complex systems humanity has ever created, ultimately rely on countless tiny logic gates opening and closing rapidly to control processing and final output. Today's technological race still revolves around miniaturizing and improving the computational efficiency of these transistor arrays. The more logic gates we can pack into a given area without burning out the processor, and the more we streamline computational processes, the better the results we will achieve.
But there is something amazing about the fact that the most fundamental principle has remained unchanged, from 19th-century elevators to today's internet.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss, and my posts are not written by artificial intelligence. Feel free to follow me for more interesting science and technology content, or search for 'Shlomo Strauss's Blog' on Google.