Hersam and his colleagues have taken a crucial early step toward this goal by redesigning one of electronic circuitry’s most fundamental building blocks, the transistor, to make it function more like a neuron. Transistors are minuscule, switchlike devices that control and generate electrical signals—they are like the nerve cells of a computer chip and underlie nearly all modern electronics. The new type of transistor, called a moiré synaptic transistor, integrates memory with processing to use less energy. As Hersam and his co-authors describe in their study, published in December 2023 in Nature, these brainlike circuits improve energy efficiency and allow AI systems to move beyond simple pattern recognition and into more brainlike decision-making.