May 21, 2023
IBM Think 2023
In early May, I had the opportunity to attend IBM Think in Orlando. This is the first conference I attended in a while and wanted to share a couple thoughts. This blog post is mostly based on my Mastodon thread..
I think the three announcements that was showcased is:
- Hybrid Cloud is the defacto standard now — you can no longer live in one cloud and they have tools to help, including Hybrid Cloud Mesh which was unvieled.
- We have just crossed a new era in AI with generative models and watsonx.ai is IBM’s approach to this, separating out the Data, AI, and Governance.
- And Quantum computers are coming — you need to start to prepare now!
For me personally, there are a few things I learned or was re-emphasized:
- 10% of all energy consumption is for data centers — I didn’t know this stat before, but definitely something we can work to bring down and and have more sustainable data centers and nnew laws in EU that will be similar to GDPR will require organizations to start reporting on this, both for their own consumption, but their partners. This seems like a huge undertaking, and while this is a great improve what gets measured, this will be a huge effort (and opportunity) for startups.
- I have been hearing about quantum computers coming since I was a kid — IBM has about 20 of them now and they are expected to really be available for purchase in 2030. That’s cool — but the part that makes that scary is that cracking our current encryption codes from years to hours, and so in addition to threats of real-time attacks, the real threat is the store-and-decrypt-when-Quantum-is-ready. There’s some new Quantum safe encryption is coming — ready yourselves for the next Y2K-type rush!
- I really enjoyed the talk by Megan Smith, particularly her comment on how people are getting coded out of society because of bad AI. There’s a lot of things she covered in this talk, but the bigger take aways for me was the DEI ones, particularly with AI models getting formed — we must teach them to not have biases and to not infer “facts” based on a lack of data.
- And for my HPC friends, IBM also talked about IBM Vela — I still miss playing with the SGI Onyx!
And that’s my quick summary of what piqued my interests the most at IBM Think — hope you find some value in this post.