To Lead In AI, Governments Need To Invest In Large-Scale GPU Clusters

Uploaded on 2024-11-04 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-IT & Telecoms

The US and EU governments need large clusters of Graphic Processing Units (GPU) dedicated to various vital missions relevant to national security and acceleration of AI into service. A GPU is an electronic circuit that can perform mathematical calculations at high speed.

Over the past decade, the fundamental unit of AI computing has grown from individual GPUs to entire data centres. Building this infrastructure is an industrial-level undertaking, one where the United States currently leads the world.

Ideally, US Federal agencies should have the capacity to securely train and deploy models of their choosing, including the leading open-source models and eventually their own proprietary models - they should be able to do this on their own data. This is not only a matter of security, but also is about of cultivating AI talent. Operating large clusters would enable the government to attract and develop experts capable of tackling the most pressing AI challenges.

Furthermore, real AI leadership requires hands-on experience with large-scale systems. While some highly capable experts in government can analyse and synthesise AI developments, there is no substitute for direct access to substantial GPU clusters. This is considered essential for informing policy decisions and participating credibly in discussions with industry leaders.

From a national security perspective, running AI models in secure environments is non-negotiable, making government-controlled clusters indispensable. Furthermore, there is a legitimate concern about ceding all thought leadership in AI to a few powerful private-sector participants.

The rise of open-source AI offers a counter-balance, but only if there is strong government support to ensure its proliferation.

Since 2020, around 70% of the world’s most compute-intensive AI models have been developed in the United States. As AI development advances, ensuring the world’s most sophisticated AI computing infrastructure continues to be located in the United States will have several major benefits:

1. Economic competitiveness: There’s a large amount of economic value to be gained by firms at the frontier of AI development. Whoever can build and access the biggest data centres will capture much of that value. Without the ability to build at scale, the U.S. is less likely to remain the global leader in AI.

2. Governance: If the most powerful models aren’t trained here, the US is less likely to have meaningful oversight over how these models are developed, and over the deployment of AI-enabled dual-use capabilities to bad actors.

3. Security: If the most powerful AI models become sensitive national security assets, they will also become priority targets for theft from cyber-capable nations like China. These attackers are more likely to fail if the models are developed and secured in the US. intelligence community has substantially more resources, expertise, and deterrence capability than comparable organisations, and is empowered to respond to cyber attacks on assets located in the United States.

The current state of US government-owned clusters is limited., but a large GPU cluster is around 20,000 or more GPU, which is not currently the case in the US. Neither the US Department of Defense (DoD) nor the intelligence community operates clusters of significant size and while the US Department of Energy (DOE) does manage a few noteworthy clusters, their accessibility to other federal agencies remains limited and this needs to change.

This trend suggests that we are entering a new phase in AI development where the focus is shifting from building more capable and powerful models, to optimising them for cost-effective deployment at scale.

Image: Stefano Marzoli

You Might Also Read:

International Agreement To Regulate Artificial Intelligence:

If you like this website and use the comprehensive 7,000-plus service supplier Directory, you can get unrestricted access, including the exclusive in-depth Directors Report series, by signing up for a Premium Subscription.