Dressed all in black except for his gold rimmed glasses and white Cole Haan sneakers, Ramin Hasani had every right to be nervous as he stepped onstage

Small worms, big dreams: How an invertebrate brain inspired Boston’s biggest AI bet

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2024-10-23 21:30:17

Dressed all in black except for his gold rimmed glasses and white Cole Haan sneakers, Ramin Hasani had every right to be nervous as he stepped onstage Wednesday to make the biggest pitch of his life. As chief executive of LiquidAI, Boston’s hottest artificial intelligence startup, the 35-year old was introducing a global audience to a unique and potentially revolutionary approach to AI.

“This is a completely new way to look at AI systems. We want to change the basis of AI,” he told the 2,000 people who’d packed MIT’s famed Kresge Auditorium to hear about LiquidAI’s new technology from the same stage that has hosted talks by seminal figures from Bill Gates to the Dalai Lama. “We are building the most capable, the most efficient AI systems in ways you haven’t seen before.”

Almost two years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT shocked the world, AI has become a multi-trillion dollar phenomenon in tech. It has also created growing alarm about how much energy it requires at a time when climate change is wreaking havoc. LiquidAI’s technology, inspired by the brain structure of a tiny roundworm, is unlike anything from OpenAI, Google, or their competitors — yet it has the potential to offer the same revolutionary applications while using a fraction of the electricity.