I want to talk a bit about impacts, not the tech itself.
Vili Lehdonvirta, a Finnish researcher based at Oxford, has mapped the geography of AI infrastructure, focusing on the distribution of computing power and the concentration of facilities housing graphics processing units (GPUs). The map reveals that a few countries dominate the industry, including the U.S., Ireland, Germany, and Japan. As AI becomes a focal point of global economic and geopolitical competition, this map is expected to play a significant role. The map also considers which tech companies own the infrastructure, highlighting the influence of companies like Amazon on AI development. The reversal of the personal computing revolution is also discussed, as computation becomes centralized in industrial-scale facilities.
According to Morgan Stanley, generative AI programs like ChatGPT could transform the gig economy into a $1.4 trillion industry. The bank believes that multi-earning has become a secular growth theme, with generative AI as the differentiator. They predict that generative AI will increase gig workers’ income by $83 billion in the base-case scenario and $300 billion in the bull-case outcome.
Why do we care?
I’m struck by the idea that AI is limited by compute, considering that the concept of cloud was to remove the limitation entirely. Funny how that’s working out. What second-level impacts will happen by the power of AI dominated by countries with that compute power? The more you can find those opportunities, the better.
The intersection of the gig economy and AI is another second-order effect I wasn’t expecting. What can be taken advantage of in that space? For you or for your customers? That second portion is the consulting I’m most interested in… how can we help customers more by leveraging AI to help them expand?
