by Angela Guess
Quentin Hardy recently wrote in the New York Times, “As the oracles of Silicon Valley debate whether the latest tech boom is sliding toward bust, there is already talk about what will drive the industry’s next growth spurt. The way we use computing is changing, toward a boom (and, if history is any guide, a bubble) in collecting oceans of data in so-called cloud computing centers, then analyzing the information to build new businesses. The terms most often associated with this are ‘machine learning’ and ‘artificial intelligence,’ or ‘A.I.’ And the creations spawned by this market could affect things ranging from globe-spanning computer systems to how you pay at the cafeteria. ‘There is going to be a boom for design companies, because there’s going to be so much information people have to work through quickly,’ said Diane B. Greene, the head of Google Compute Engine, one of the companies hoping to steer an A.I. boom. ‘Just teaching companies how to use A.I. will be a big business.’”
Hardy goes on, “This kind of change is what keeps Silicon Valley going. When personal computers displaced mainframe computers, it opened the door not just for Apple, but for companies making PC software for business, games and publishing. In the networking and Internet revolutions, venture capitalists invested in these new computing styles, and another generation of companies was born. Over the last decade, smartphones, social networks and cloud computing have moved from feeding the growth of companies like Facebook and Twitter, leapfrogging to Uber, Airbnb and others that have used the phones, personal rating systems and powerful remote computers in the cloud to create their own new businesses.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ Crystl