SCIENTIST CREATES CHIP THAT PROCESSES WI-FI AT SPEED OF LIGHT; YOUR PORN STILL BUFFERS ANYWAY
MIT Researchers Develop Technology That Could Make Internet Lightning Fast, But Your Crappy Router Will Definitely Ruin It
BY MAXWELL CLICKBAITER
In what experts are calling “technological wizardry that will absolutely be wasted on people watching cat videos,” MIT researchers have created a photonic chip that processes wireless signals at the speed of light, potentially revolutionizing 6G technology while ensuring you’ll still scream at your device when it freezes during the climactic scene of whatever you’re streaming.
THE TECHNICAL SH!T YOU WON’T UNDERSTAND
The breakthrough device, known as a “multiplicative analog frequency transform optical neural network” (or “magic light box” for those of us who didn’t fail upward into MIT), processes wireless signals in nanoseconds instead of microseconds. That’s approximately 100 times faster than current technology, or roughly the speed difference between a cheetah and your grandmother crossing the street.
Dr. Dirk Englund, who definitely didn’t create this just so he could download his “homework folder” faster, claims the chip could enable real-time AI analysis at the network edge, whatever the f@#k that means.
EXPERTS WEIGH IN, UNFORTUNATELY
“This technological advancement is nothing short of revolutionary,” explained Professor Ida Rather Watchporn, head of the Institute for Stating the Obvious. “With this chip, your phone could theoretically download an entire season of your favorite show in seconds, but your cellular provider will still find a way to throttle your data and charge you extra.”
According to our surveys, approximately 97.3% of Americans responded to news of the breakthrough by asking, “But will it make my TikToks load faster?” (Statistical margin of error: we made this up entirely)
WHY YOUR STUPID PHONE STILL WON’T WORK BETTER
Despite being smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than existing hardware accelerators, the photonic chip faces one insurmountable obstacle: you and your technological ineptitude.
“The MAFT-ONN achieves 85% accuracy in a single shot and can reach 99% with multiple measurements,” explained lead researcher Ronald Davis III, while our eyes glazed over completely. “But it doesn’t matter how fast the signal processes if you’re still using the password ‘password123’ and haven’t updated your router since 2017.”
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WHO AREN’T NERDS
The researchers suggest the technology could help autonomous vehicles make split-second decisions, potentially allowing self-driving cars to hit pedestrians with unprecedented efficiency. It could also enable smart pacemakers to continuously monitor heart health, sending you a notification that you’re having a heart attack seconds before you die.
LOCAL MAN COMPLETELY UNIMPRESSED
“I don’t give a rat’s @ss if it’s powered by light, dark matter, or unicorn farts,” said local Luddite Terry Wifisucks. “I just want to be able to use my microwave without my Netflix buffering.”
The photonic processor has achieved 95% accuracy in signal classification, which is coincidentally the exact percentage of people who will continue to blame their internet provider rather than understand what signal classification even means.
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS THAT WON’T AFFECT YOU FOR AT LEAST A DECADE
Looking ahead, the MIT team hopes to scale up their technology to run transformer models and large language models, ensuring that in the future, AI chatbots can tell you they don’t understand your question at the speed of light.
At press time, three of our reporters were still waiting for this article to load on their devices, further proving that no amount of technological advancement will fix the crushing disappointment that is modern connectivity.
