In the field of machine learning, large datasets are essential for heavy tasks. However, the performance of power-hungry processors is limited by the data transfer to and from memory. Optical computing has been gaining interest as a means of high-speed computation, and here we present an optical computing framework called scalable optical learning operator based on spatiotemporal effects in multimode fibers. This framework is capable of performing various learning tasks, such as classifying COVID-19 X-ray lung images, speech recognition, and age prediction from face images. Our approach addresses the energy scaling problem without compromising speed by leveraging the simultaneous, linear and nonlinear interaction of spatial modes as a computation engine. Our experiments demonstrate the accuracy of our method comparable to a digital implementation.
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