These articles tend to overstate “using AI to design” technical systems when conceptually they’re really fuzzing the performance characteristics of different variations on an algorithm against a reference implementation, and validating its correctness.

I’m coming from software so I’m not sure how much simulation/verification can be done automatically in chip design, but I’d bet money this sort of process is what they’re talking about, similar to the alpha evolve paper from a bit ago. Rather than going “hey chatgpt how do I design this chip??”

Ah, that sounds correct to me.

My interpretation is probably distorted by having worked at big companies that have arms in basically every part of software development so there is no side project programming that is “out of scope” there.

But working at a company with a narrower focus would let you moonlight more freely.

Salaried american software developer here. While some large companies have moonlighting carve outs, by and large the rights to any of your work done outside working hours is at the employer’s discretion.

(I call out salaried because I think those clauses can vary depending on the structure of your employment)

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