Cloud servers can be thought of humanity’s first truly global infrastructure given they act as the bedrock for executing artificial intelligence (AI), or so went the argument in a November edition of The Economist.

According to market intelligence provider IDC’s “Data Age 2025” White Paper, published in 2018, the public cloud – cloud services such as AI tools offered across multiple customers by a single provider –  will account for 26% of the world’s digitally-stored information by 2025, double the share in 2016. Around 30% of the global datasphere is expected to be generated in realtime. This would potentially be absorbed for deep learning training or inference. These may seem like abstract figures, but the infrastructure challenge is enormous. Bottlenecks in data centres, such as packed interconnects and obstructions that risk system failures, are proving one of the biggest roadblocks to AI’s adoption. In a signal the developing world will soon demand more cloud data capacity, Teraco, Africa’s biggest operator of independent data centres, has begun work on a 38-megawatt facility. Teraco has seen its NAPAfrica subsidiary and the continent’s main internet exchange point connecting hundreds of African telecoms and content providers reach 1.5 terabit a second in peak traffic, according to the Financial Times’s feature last month. Nigeria, whose economy has historically plagued by recurrent power outages, has announced plans for its own AI research hub, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Isa Pantami, the minister of communication and the digital economy, has pledged to engage young Nigerians into AI with the aim of fuelling innovation that might give its economy a lift. Should the centre launch – and caution should be exercised as infrastructure projects in the country do have a history of going awry, then it might add more competition for Africa’s developmental dollar, pitting the US and its public clouds against China’s, which owns around 20% of African debt and has added the region to its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. The Economist article used an analogy for today’s “technopolitics”, comparing software platforms to strategic territorial assets – a country containing mountains in the path of long-distance transit routes, for instance or onshore constrictions for maritime traffic. Each is a potential flashpoint for international relations. The rise of tech giants, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook in the US and Alibaba, Tencent, SoftBank and Baidu in Asia, provides scope for software platforms to challenge or support governments and lawmakers. In January 2020, Google and Facebook threatened to discontinue Australian media services if legislation was passed to force them to negotiate licences with content providers. China was once more accepting of western IT hegemonies than it is now. There…

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