Thursday, October 10, 2019

At Tech’s Leading Edge, Worry About a Concentration of Power - By Steve Lohr, NY Times

Computer scientists say A.I. research is becoming increasingly expensive, requiring complex calculations done by giant data centers, leaving fewer people with easy access to the computing firepower necessary to develop the technology behind futuristic products like self-driving cars or digital assistants that can see, talk and reason. The danger, they say, is that pioneering artificial intelligence research will be a field of haves and have-nots. And the haves will be mainly a few big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, which each spend billions a year building out their data centers. In the have-not camp, they warn, will be university labs, which have traditionally been a wellspring of innovations that eventually power new products and services.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/technology/ai-computer-expense.html