Photochromic and luminescent materials for the development of Chemical Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an interdisciplinary research line that aims to devise intelligent machines. Chemical Artificial Intelligence (CAI) focuses on designing intelligent chemical systems, primarily in wetware. This work shows that intelligent chemical systems can be implemented by devising neural surrogates that, by interplaying, can give rise to synchronization phenomena analogous to those of real neurons in the brain. When the signals employed in the communication are UV–visible radiations, the artificial neuron models can be implemented through photochromic and luminescent compounds, as this work demonstrates. Furthermore, this article describes how photochromic and luminescent materials contribute to processing Fuzzy logic, which is a good model of human power to compute by using words. Perspectives on how photoswitchable materials will be employed in further developments of CAI are outlined.