AMARA’S LAW IN THE CONTEXT OF AI AND DATA CENTRES
With artificial intelligence driving unprecedented changes and rapid growth, across industries, questions are arising about its true impact on data centre infrastructure and day-to-day operations.
While some predict revolutionary transformations with widespread adoption, others suggest we might be experiencing another example of Amara’s Law:
“We overestimate the effect of a technology in the short term and underestimate its effect in the long term.”
It may be reasonable to say that the current views on the impact of AI are so far-reaching that this may be a case where Amara’s Law does not apply.
However, thinking about it further, despite our current predictions on the huge impact of AI, we are only just beginning to consider the tumultuous impact of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or even Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) when (not if!) it arrives.
THE CURRENT STATE OF AI
Our current Generative AI systems are really rather dumb, designed for a single focussed task. They simply use existing data and statistical analysis to represent what humans might produce.
This data scraping can increasingly result in generative AI models ingesting AI-created content. This results in recursive AI ‘inbreeding’, potentially even leading to ‘model collapse’, with all useful and accurate data effectively ‘lost’.
Not so intelligent after all!
THE REAL GAME CHANGERS: AGI AND ASI
The advent of AGI and, ultimately, ASI are the real tech industry game changers.
We can’t even begin to predict the economic and societal impacts they will have. In that respect Amara’s Law will definitely hold true.
AGI will be able to learn and develop solutions to entirely new problems in unfamiliar situations, without being programmed to do so and without necessarily having past experience or knowledge.
ASI is yet another step and describes intelligence above and beyond human. In this case, the word ‘Artificial’ may even have to be dropped as it would simply be intelligence at an incomparable level.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
I would like to pose two critical questions:
- Are the technologies we are creating today the precursors of the machines that will one day take human knowledge and experience to places we cannot go ourselves due to our biological limitations?
- Will the arrival of AGI and especially ASI, be the potential next step in human evolution that will allow us to go beyond our biological constraints and even travel beyond our own solar system?
If so, then Amara’s Law will be proved correct beyond any measure!
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS FOR DATA CENTRE OPERATIONS
So, is AI’s impact on data centres being overhyped?
While the immediate impacts of AI on data centres might be overstated, the long-term transformative potential for the data centre market could be far greater than current predictions suggest.
This precisely demonstrates Amara’s Law in action – we might simultaneously overestimate AI’s short-term effects while underappreciating its revolutionary long-term potential.
And that itself raises important considerations for data centre operators who have an eye on the future:
- Is data centre infrastructure ready for the computational power needed for advanced AI workloads?
- Are power supply and cooling requirements considered for next-generation AI systems?
- Have we considered the environmental impact of AGI and ASI energy consumption?
- What are the security threats of more sophisticated AI systems?
- Is data centre capacity mapped for future scalability and adaptability?
- How do we manage the rapidly increasing power consumption of AI platforms?
- Should we increasingly be looking to use AI to manage AI workloads and improve resource efficiency in data centres using Machine Learning and ‘AI’ tools to answer these questions?
This is certainly food for thought and something we should continue to monitor and discuss.
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