  Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms based on neural networks have been
designed for decades with the goal of maximising some measure of accuracy. This
has led to two undesired effects. First, model complexity has risen
exponentially when measured in terms of computation and memory requirements.
Second, state-of-the-art AI models are largely incapable of providing
trustworthy measures of their uncertainty, possibly `hallucinating' their
answers and discouraging their adoption for decision-making in sensitive
applications.
  With the goal of realising efficient and trustworthy AI, in this paper we
highlight research directions at the intersection of hardware and software
design that integrate physical insights into computational substrates,
neuroscientific principles concerning efficient information processing,
information-theoretic results on optimal uncertainty quantification, and
communication-theoretic guidelines for distributed processing. Overall, the
paper advocates for novel design methodologies that target not only accuracy
but also uncertainty quantification, while leveraging emerging computing
hardware architectures that move beyond the traditional von Neumann digital
computing paradigm to embrace in-memory, neuromorphic, and quantum computing
technologies. An important overarching principle of the proposed approach is to
view the stochasticity inherent in the computational substrate and in the
communication channels between processors as a resource to be leveraged for the
purpose of representing and processing classical and quantum uncertainty.
