You can’t solve your AI anxiety by blocking the Data Center nearby.
They’ll just build it in the next county, the next State, in Tierra del Fuego, under the Ocean, or in Space.
This week, a first test bed satellite was launched to begin solving problems related to space based Data Centers. Google thinks they will be economically viable in the mid 2030s.
And don’t think that they’re just going to make humanity extinct in 5 years. We’re not getting off that easy.
We’re going to have to step up and figure this problem out with the right kind of guard rails and international agreements, and the path to doing that starts in next month’s election.
Google’s prototype of its orbital compute satellite took off today onboard a SpaceX rocket launched from California — the first time the tech giant has sent one of its advanced chips into space.
Built by Planet Labs, the satellite will prove that a Google Tensor Processing Unit, its competitor to Nvidia’s GPUs, can function in space. That means supplying a kilowatt of continuous power, cooling the chip, and running a series of models through their paces to see if anything goes wrong.
“We’ve done testing on the ground, but you know, there’s no test that’s completely as good as the real thing,” said Travis Beals, the Google executive managing Project Suncatcher, the tech giant’s plan to develop large-scale compute clusters in orbit around the Earth.
Once commissioned, the satellite will fire up its TPU in 15-minute bursts to avoid straining the satellite’s power and thermal management systems. This satellite is based on a standard platform built by Planet Labs, but the two companies are working on a demo expected to take flight next year that will see two satellites more purpose-built for advanced compute that can run more substantial workloads. Those future versions will attempt to collaborate via a laser communications link.