Soria is a spokesperson for the United States Department of State in technology and women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). “In the future, it won’t be so important that you have to be technical to have a startup and solve a problem. It will be more a matter of identifying the right problem to solve and then technology as a AI Generation will help you,” he said.
Problems can be solved even by those who don’t know how to write a single line of code, he added. This is a “huge opportunity” for India, with its large population and unique local problems. Young people in India, including high school students, are very familiar with and use tools like ChatGPT, while in the U.S. this is seen more among college students, Soria noted.
While countries can cooperate to improve AI skills and address talent shortages, technology can help address existing problems as no-code platforms are emerging that enable it, Soria said. At the same time, learning is being driven by big companies themselves. “I know a lot of Indians aspire to go to the US and study and work there. But what I’m trying to communicate to everyone is that you don’t have to do that — the technology is available to you wherever you are,” Soria said.
Thinking about the future
On US President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence, which among other things seeks to attract global talent in AI, Soria said that any country, not just the US, now aspires to have the best talent. However, the perceived impact of the US elections on companies’ spending decisions may be exaggerated, according to Soria.
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“I’m not going to say there will be absolutely no impact… There will be some regulations and some laws that might benefit one company or another, but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s going to completely change the landscape of what’s been happening with big companies right now,” Soria said.
“Yes, there is a dependency on companies in terms of what they can or cannot do depending on who wins the election, but I don’t think it is as destabilizing a power as many people make it out to be,” he added.
In addition, Soria said that large companies like Microsoft and Apple have already placed their bets in terms of how they are going to invest in Gen AI, and what is emerging now is how long it will take them to recoup the capital expenditure they invested.
Waiting game
What is proving challenging, however, are disruptions to global supply chains and in particular a shortage of graphics processing units (GPUs). Notably, the US has put in place certain export controls on critical AI-related components amid tensions with China, its rival in the AI race. Soria’s company, Knightscope, combines self-driving, robotics and AI technology to predict and combat crime. It recently ordered around 3,000 GPUs and faced a six-month waiting period. “I don’t want to speak for the US government, but my personal view is that some of those restrictions need to be lifted,” Soria said.
“The world is not going to be able to sustain that kind of wait, so there will have to be some kind of compromises somewhere, where some of those components are allowed to come into the United States or other countries.” Countries’ ability to meet their sustainability commitments will also become more difficult, Soria said, given the amount of energy required in Gen AI “server farms.”
“This was not something we planned for. Three years ago we didn’t know we were going to have hundreds of thousands of servers in a single computer room,” he said. “But I’m confident that humans will find a solution to this, and if not with the very software we’re building, it could help us find a solution.”
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