Is Space the Final Frontier for AI Data Centers?

“Could AI Data Centers Be Moved to Outer Space?”

“Space: the final frontier for artificial intelligence? Facebook, Amazon, and Oracle certainly think so. They’re racing to put AI data centers in space because they’d have a leg up on latency, the delay between a data request and its fulfillment.” – quote from WIRED

So, Facebook, Amazon, and Oracle are toying with the rather adventurous idea of housing AI data centers in space. Yes, you read that right. These companies appear to believe that the cosmos is the next logical step for data storage. According to them, it’s all about securing an advantage over latency – the frustrating gap between requesting data and actually getting it.

Because we all know that a delay of microseconds can mean (literally) the world to an AI. You’d think these corporations were running some high-stakes intergalactic gambling operation considering the lengths they’re willing to go to shave off a fraction of a second.

Now, some say it’s crazy, that it’s a waste of resources. That we should focus on improving our terrestrial data centers instead. Some ask ‘why bother with space when we can’t even keep our servers from overheating here on earth?’ A large and complicated satellite network floating in space, managed by AI, will not magically solve all our earthly challenges.

What next? Lunar data centers powered by moon juice? Maybe Mars is the perfect location for archiving all our cat memes?

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt here. Facebook, Amazon, and Oracle are among the most significant players in the tech industry. They’re not just about taking moonshots (pun intended). They have brilliant minds working behind the scenes, surely churning out reasonable solutions to our latency issues.

We’re surely living in exciting times. On one hand, tech’s biggest players are unveiling mind-boggling technologies that redefine the way we see and command our world. On the other hand, we still can’t figure out how to make our phones’ batteries last an entire day.

Ultimately, whether we choose to embrace this space age solution or not, one thing remains abundantly clear: the quest for a faster, smarter, and more efficient data-centric world is far from over. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some low-latency, high-speed interstellar data to attend to…

Read the original article here: https://www.wired.com/story/could-we-put-ai-data-centers-in-space/