We hear it all the time – “rapidly-changing environment”. It tends to blur into the background of our language in the office and in technology as a looming force ever arriving at the horizon of how we interact and transact. This is only a half-truth, as the rapidly-changing environment is also accelerating at which it is changing.
It was announced recently that the newest generation of Quantum Supercomputers can process and calculate a problem with the size and complexity that would take its predecessor septillions of years to complete, in minutes. For those wondering, a septillion has twenty-four zeros. This amount of time, complexity and magnitude of processing power this represents is barely comprehendible, and represents a huge step in how we navigate our world with technology.
This also represents a development into a sort of “weapons grade” technology and computation power, harkening back to the “doomsday clock” visual during the cold war. Each minute closer to midnight represents our closeness to the end, and while this was traditionally applied to means of war like nuclear weapons, these new leaps in computational technology carry that torch into our new digital age.
A significant part of modern warfare is fought through infrastructure, logistics and and ever increasing reliance on the digital systems that coordinate them. Since its birth and inception the internet has served as an information distribution equalizer, allowing seemingly small players to hold outsized leverage to larger forces in the space. A single computer worm or virus has historically caused incalculable damage to how our society works, and this nimbleness to powerful computers only amplifies this danger.
Our current model of cybersecurity is based on system complexity, completeness of coverage on potential vulnerabilities, and the people that participate in that security system. In an environment where passwords of virtually any complexity and length can be cracked in moments, we will need to rethink our approach to security of our existing and upcoming technology.
Our more complex processing tasks take an often unseen amount of power and resources. Every time that we search on Google, processing power is used to bring us the results that we want returned. This takes the shape of electricity used, bandwidth on existing infrastructure capacity. The development of generative AI has accelerated this resource use as well; with some Large Language Models (LLMs) queries using the same energy as dozens of normal web searches. As we move to a model of interacting online that involves more AI, machine learning and resource intensive systems, this will only increase our demand for energy to run these systems. We experienced this and continue to see it in the mining and management of cryptocurrency and NFTs and is a point to be considered as we continue into this new age of technological acceleration.
Security and sustainability of our computation resources will be critical in how the next years and generations of technology unfold. Responsible use of computational power and AI usage must come from a reductive mindset to its use to where only the absolutely necessary components of these systems are supported by these cutting edge technologies.
– Andi