Data: we create, store and consume more and more of it for years. Demand continues to increase, whether for our tools or our entertainment. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptography and metaverse… Investments are now colossal to keep up.
A few weeks ago, in the form of an infographic, Visual Capitalist attempted to summarize the strategic challenges of the datasphere. The question is simple: what impact will AI and the metaverse have on the data market?
According to analysts, the second half of the 21st century will be remembered for its advances in artificial intelligence. Normal, after so much spending and technological advances!
Experts believe that the first advances took place at the end of 2015 with DeepMind’s AlphaGo, a computer capable of winning the game of Go against a professional in the discipline. Since then, progress has been considerable, no longer limited to simple entertainment. OpenAI’s GPT-4 now has 55,000 times more computing power. The pace is such that the technique has difficulty keeping up. Approximately every ten months, capacities double.
The other project that is being built before our eyes is the metaverse. An immersive web accessible in augmented reality and virtual reality that we still have difficulty imagining today, but which turns out to be very data intensive. Compared to the web as we know it, this new universe requires and will require enormous resources and very little latency. Beyond individual devices, new infrastructures must emerge.
There are just over 5,000 data centers in the world, 39% of which are in the United States. France had 167 at the latest news. However, to meet the demand for data linked to AI and the metaverse, two options are possible:
- Think bigger, by building enormous data centers measuring millions of square meters of surface area.
- Decentralize, to reduce latency times by having installations close to users.
In these two cases, the bill promises to be steep. Global data center spending is expected to reach $208 billion in 2023, an increase of 13.1% compared to last year.