Microchips are in everything from cars to computers to phones. It’s an important part of our lifestyle that is a growing industry in Arizona.
The University of Arizona hosted a competition called the AI Hardware Design League that had students integrate artificial intelligence into making microchips.
Sean Rice is an undergraduate student majoring in electrical engineering who won overall design in the competition.
“AI makes intellectual work much more efficient,” Rice said.
He said almost in the way he has a conversation with people, he’ll have a conversation with the AI.
“It just provides an extremely rich source of information really quickly,” Rice said. “You ask the AI why might this not be working, and it’ll provide a suggestion. You implement that.”
He used its suggestions to design a digital watch with an alarm clock and stopwatch, as well as a security feature, some of the main components of the competition.
“Using AI to create a real piece of technology that can actually be implemented in the physical world was really interesting,” he said.
Governor Hobbs announced in January that she’s creating an AI steering committee to shape AI policy.
“With AI kind of taking the world by storm, we know there’s going to be a lot of demand for compute, a hugely increasing demand for compute and that means there’s going to be…that means there’s going to be a greatly increasing demand for semiconductors as well,” Rice said.
Since 2020 the company Taiwan Semiconductor has announced three semiconductor manufacturing fabrications in Arizona.
Last year the federal government also gave Intel billions to expand computer chips in Arizona.
“The economy is growing in Arizona especially because of all the incentives,” Soheil Salehi.
Salehi is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and a fellow of the Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing. He designed the competition and said he feels the need to grow the workforce in the AI and semiconductor industries.
“Encourage the students and teach them on what are the good uses of AI, tools that are available,” Salehi said.
Meanwhile, Rice is hoping to contribute to the two industries so that it can open up doors for future generations.
“Projects like this help raise awareness among the student population that it’s something that’s really exciting to get into,” Rice said.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
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