New research from Oxford University points out that in more than 190 countries around the world, only 32 countries have AI data centers, and up to 150 countries can hardly obtain the computing power required to develop AI. The Oxford University rese...
New research from Oxford University points out that in more than 190 countries around the world, only 32 countries have AI data centers, and up to 150 countries can hardly obtain the computing power required to develop AI.
The Oxford University research team systematically draws the distribution map of global AI-based facilities by analyzing the customer websites of nine major cloud service providers. It can be clearly seen from this picture that although the United States and China are the main beneficiaries of this trend, there are also big gaps.
The United States has inverted strengths. American companies, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, operate a total of 87 AI centers around the world, surpassing the second place in China 39. Most of the data center chips are provided by the American company Nvidia, and GPUs have become the key cornerstone of the AI trend.
When OpenAI executive Sam Altman promoted the Stargate project with a total investment of US$50 billion, he recently visited the AI basic facilities in the workforce. A computer science professor at the University of Córdoba, Argentina, was renovating classrooms and using time-filled chips to do AI research. This gap highlights that Africa and South America are almost excluded from the global wave of AI development.
Followed by the advantages of AI technology and computing power, the two major AI powerhouses in the United States and China have also set off a ground-breaking political storm around the world. Washington has achieved high-performance chips controlled by export controls around the world, and Beijing has promoted its own hardware with a large number of countries. In the Arab United Grand Duchy, Chinese technology was excluded to replace Nvidia and micro products. Companies such as Africa and China are trying to use Chinese chips to help transform their data centers locally.
(Picture source: Oxford University)
Researchers pointed out that countries with computing power may have an impact that is comparable to those of oil-producing countries. Due to the difficulty in obtaining the high price of Nvidia GPUs, many countries are forced to rent AI computing power from mainstream cloud platforms. If these countries do not have more computing resources, the gap between countries may expand again, and even endanger the digital dominance foundation of various countries.
African and South American countries are almost entirely excluded from global AI development
