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Bond — which is a San Francisco-based VC firm with a cool website — just published this 340-page report on Artificial Intelligence. One of the authors of the report is Mary Meeker. She has been called the "Queen of the Internet" thanks to a 20-year run of presentations about the state of the internet, and her perceived ability to identity new trends early. So people are paying attention to this report. Her last one was in 2019 and I mentioned her 2018 report on this blog, here.
At this point, it's boring to say that AI is ushering in "unprecedented" global change. Everyone sends around snippets from ChatGPT. I incorporate some sort of AI-powered tool all the time in my daily workflow. And we've started using it on our development projects to help with tedious things like design coordination. Eventually we'll probably stop calling it out as "AI" and just refer to it as the things that computers and the internet can do.
But I think it's valuable to point out that this has been a really long time coming. The report talks about an "AI winter" from 1967 to 1996. That's a long time to stay motivated and interested in something that doesn't seem to be gaining traction. And it's a reminder that crypto is still early. Even though I also use blockchains every day and I've already transitioned (or am transitioning) a lot of my online life, including this blog.
Of particular relevance to this community is probably the fact that AI is also going to have a meaningful impact on our built environment. One of the sections in the report is called "Physical World AI," and it talks about how quickly data centers are now being built (compared to housing) and how Waymo (using AI) has taken something like 27% of the ride share market in San Francisco in the span of just 20 months.
This transportation product is now scaling, and cities have always responded and remade themselves according to new mobility innovations. This time won't be any different.
Cover photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
I don’t think a lot of people consider the spatial implications of the online world. By this, I’m specifically referring to the massive data centers required to power the internet.
Earlier this year Facebook opened its first European data center in Sweden, less than 70 miles from the arctic circle. It’s 900,000 square feet. That’s about equivalent to a 102 storey condo tower.
Behind the virtual worlds we live in - Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others - lies nondescript buildings with repeating rows of machines inside them. They’re the complete antithesis of the vibrant lives we pretend to have on the consumer web, but they’re making it all possible. It feels just like the Matrix.
And there are some interesting shifts taking place in the data center space. Facebook - through its Open Compute Project - now designs its own centers and makes the work available to others, for free. It’s an “open hardware” play that could threaten incumbents in the space such as Dell and Cisco.
Facebook’s goal is “to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.” Their Swedish outpost represents their first self-designed center. And it’s proven to be a highly efficient one.
While the average data center might use 3 watts to produce 1 watt of computing tower, Facebook’s Swedish center was able to get that ratio down to 1.04 : 1, largely because the colder climate allowed for a dramatic reduction in cooling loads. It makes a ton of a sense.
I’ve actually thought about this before. Why aren’t more data centers - which have massive cooling requirements - built in colder climates? I just so happen to know of a country with lots of prime arctic circle real estate.
Bond — which is a San Francisco-based VC firm with a cool website — just published this 340-page report on Artificial Intelligence. One of the authors of the report is Mary Meeker. She has been called the "Queen of the Internet" thanks to a 20-year run of presentations about the state of the internet, and her perceived ability to identity new trends early. So people are paying attention to this report. Her last one was in 2019 and I mentioned her 2018 report on this blog, here.
At this point, it's boring to say that AI is ushering in "unprecedented" global change. Everyone sends around snippets from ChatGPT. I incorporate some sort of AI-powered tool all the time in my daily workflow. And we've started using it on our development projects to help with tedious things like design coordination. Eventually we'll probably stop calling it out as "AI" and just refer to it as the things that computers and the internet can do.
But I think it's valuable to point out that this has been a really long time coming. The report talks about an "AI winter" from 1967 to 1996. That's a long time to stay motivated and interested in something that doesn't seem to be gaining traction. And it's a reminder that crypto is still early. Even though I also use blockchains every day and I've already transitioned (or am transitioning) a lot of my online life, including this blog.
Of particular relevance to this community is probably the fact that AI is also going to have a meaningful impact on our built environment. One of the sections in the report is called "Physical World AI," and it talks about how quickly data centers are now being built (compared to housing) and how Waymo (using AI) has taken something like 27% of the ride share market in San Francisco in the span of just 20 months.
This transportation product is now scaling, and cities have always responded and remade themselves according to new mobility innovations. This time won't be any different.
Cover photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
I don’t think a lot of people consider the spatial implications of the online world. By this, I’m specifically referring to the massive data centers required to power the internet.
Earlier this year Facebook opened its first European data center in Sweden, less than 70 miles from the arctic circle. It’s 900,000 square feet. That’s about equivalent to a 102 storey condo tower.
Behind the virtual worlds we live in - Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others - lies nondescript buildings with repeating rows of machines inside them. They’re the complete antithesis of the vibrant lives we pretend to have on the consumer web, but they’re making it all possible. It feels just like the Matrix.
And there are some interesting shifts taking place in the data center space. Facebook - through its Open Compute Project - now designs its own centers and makes the work available to others, for free. It’s an “open hardware” play that could threaten incumbents in the space such as Dell and Cisco.
Facebook’s goal is “to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.” Their Swedish outpost represents their first self-designed center. And it’s proven to be a highly efficient one.
While the average data center might use 3 watts to produce 1 watt of computing tower, Facebook’s Swedish center was able to get that ratio down to 1.04 : 1, largely because the colder climate allowed for a dramatic reduction in cooling loads. It makes a ton of a sense.
I’ve actually thought about this before. Why aren’t more data centers - which have massive cooling requirements - built in colder climates? I just so happen to know of a country with lots of prime arctic circle real estate.
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