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Generative AI is having far reaching impacts on datacenters and new data shedding light on the nature and extent of the impacts. Analysts Melissa Incera and Dan Thompson return to the podcast to dig into the data and discuss the ramifications for enterprises, datacenter builders and operators and those putting AI to work with host Eric Hanselman. The computational requirements of generative AI are unique, taking demands similar to high performance computing or cryptomining and spreading them across a vast new community of users. The demands for GPU-based capacity are consuming more power, sometimes with order of magnitude increases. It's also driving retrofitting of existing datacenters. The need for higher capacity and innovations like liquid cooling are causing a new surge. We're at the beginning of the shift from a focus on model training to greater amounts of inferencing, changing where capacity is needed.

Looking at money flows in this market offers additional nuance. Investments in AI startups have been massive. Capital investments from hyperscalers in their own infrastructure is also massive, but it remains to be seen if they'll pay off in equivalent amounts of revenue. Is all of this sustainable? It's an complicated question in the many aspects of the word.

Host: Eric Hanselman

Guests:

Melissa Incera

Dan Thompson

Links to show content:

Webinar replay (registration required)

For 451 Research clients:

https://clients.451research.com/reports/204284

https://clients.451research.com/reports/204175

451 Research commissioned report highlights:

New Report from S&P Global Market Intelligence and Vultr Provides Unique Glimpse into Path to AI Maturity

Full report (registration required)

There's substantial cybersecurity risk in critical infrastructure and addressing it is a complex problem that involves regulatory and private sector efforts. Joshua Corman, founder of I am the Cavalry and the CyberMed Summit, and Rob Knake, cybersecurity expert and former federal cybersecurity official, join host Eric Hanselman to explore the nature of the problems and the challenges we face in addressing them. This is a conversation that continues from their session at the America's Growth Capital's annual West Coast Cybersecurity Conference that ran alongside the RSA Conference.

One of the challenges in securing critical infrastructure, is that it's often addressed as independent activities. That can miss the impact of cascading failures that can occur, given the interdependencies that exist across utilities and the social services that depend on them. Ransomware attacks on hospitals have taken weeks to resolve, rather than days. The Colonial pipeline attack shutdown services for a week. Behind this is a set of challenges that need to be addressed on the scale of the Y2K crisis at the start of the century, but that lack a hard deadline. There is progress being made, but there is much more to do.

Host:

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/contributors/1535668/eric-hanselman

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erichanselman/

Guests:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshcorman/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rknake/

Links to show content:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/National-Cybersecurity-Strategy-2023.pdf

https://youtu.be/dhJvslRRlFc?si=TmNbbRuh4MeSu0BO

https://www.rsaconference.com/library/presentation/usa/2024/getting%20serious%20critical%20disruptionsthinkingresponses%20%20rumors%20of%20war

https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/programs/chemical-facility-anti-terrorism-standards-cfats

Rumors of the demise of the metaverse have circulated widely, but the latest revenue numbers and market activity are showing that it's recovering from post-pandemic pull-backs. The industrial metaverse is showing strong growth and attendance at the 15th anniversary of Augmented World Expo USA is up. Analysts Neil Barbour and Ian Hughes are just back from the Expo and discuss their insights with host Eric Hanselman. Metaverse and augmented reality tools are shifting the conversation from human interface to humane interface technologies, looking to better convey information. Semiconductor advances are putting more power into headsets and glasses, and remote rendering and cloud streaming are offloading some of the computational load to the cloud. It's a combination that is bringing the metaverse into retail applications and making it useful for the people who are putting it to work. AI is in the mix, as well, both building worlds and performing language translation.

Over a decade ago, Marc Andreessen said that software was eating the world and today we could easily say that open source is eating the software world. It's widely adopted and deployed and has become a key element of the IT landscape. The last year has seen some players shifting their approaches to the market, but have these affected the fundamental values of the open source community? Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technical and Product Officer at SUSE and Cloud Native Computing Foundation board member, joins host Eric Hanselman at the SUSECON conference to talk about some of the dynamics of the open source market. Enterprises are leveraging open source to reduce risk in experimentation and tapping into the innovations that are coming out of the open source community. It's not always a simple path, but it's one that more are finding attractive, particularly in light of upheavals in the proprietary markets.

Guest: Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo

Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Producer/Editor: Kyle Cangialosi, Donovan Menard
• Published with assistance from: Sophie Carr

While most of us have a basic understanding of phishing, the email attack tactic that's been with us for years, attack techniques and the attacker community have been evolving rapidly. The speed of that evolution is outpacing the ability of users to detect the latest instances of phishing attacks and the advances are not slowing down. Poornima DeBolle, co-founder and chief product officer at Menlo Security, joins host Eric Hanselman to look at how phishing has changed and the options available to defenders. The days of misspelled, badly worded emails are disappearing behind us, being replaced by ever more targeted versions, enhanced with the power of AI. Defenses are being challenged, from new tactics to appear more trustworthy, to advanced proxies that can subvert multifactor authentication. There's a greater need for technical protections, as attackers get better at outfoxing even the best trained users.

Host: Eric Hanselman

Guest: Poornima DeBolle

IT buying sentiment has remained positive in the latest edition of the 451 Research Tech Demand Indicator study. It showed a strong start to 2024, but there were other signals buried in the data. Liam Eagle and Malav Parekh, two of the study's authors, return to the podcast to join host Eric Hanselman to explore the results and their implications. The study explores spending sentiment and contrasts it with macroeconomic impacts, looking at shifts across demographics and technology verticals. Information security spending stays strong, but the gap between expectations in consumers is notable. High-income households are much more positive than their lower-income counterparts. The study data can inform those trying to make sense of the IT landscape.

Tech Demand Indicator webinar

Link to the 451 Alliance application

Recent study results are identifying where AI is being put to work and how customers and end users are reacting to its use. Sheryl Kingstone, head of the experiences team, returns to look at the Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Connected Customer, Disruptive Experiences 2024 study with host Eric Hanselman. This longitudinal study tracks changes in attitude and use of AI. While there is significant use of AI, there are strong differences between generations across the study. One of the questions the study raises is how users will work with AI capabilities that are integrated into products and services. There has been a slight positive shift in attitudes as there is more practical use in writing assistance and content creation. Enterprises are starting to integrate traditional AI techniques, such as machine learning, with generative AI capabilities and having success in customer service applications. It's a complex landscape that impacts how AI will be viewed and leveraged.

Sentiment analysis is a common use case for large language models in generative AI and we're kicking off Pride Month with a discussion of a recent study that examined the way firms are talking about LGBTQ+ issues in public statements. Returning guest Emily Jasper and Ilan Attar of Pronto NLP, who led the analysis, join host Eric Hanselman to look at what the study explored, how they trained the model used for the analysis, and some of the results. While many organizations make supporting statements around diversity, equity and inclusion, insights can be gleaned on the depth of the commitment expressed. It requires much more than the typical sentiment analysis, not only because of the common use of the word pride, but also because of the complexity of the environments in which supporting statements are made. In a year where DEI initiatives have been under strain, determining the level of "pinkwashing" that may be taking place can offer useful perspectives on positioning and support.

The power required to fuel the wave of generative AI use could be massive, but there are many factors that will determine when the crest of that demand will arrive. Analysts Leika Kawasaki and Dan Thompson join host Eric Hanselman to look at recent research in current demand profiles and discuss where it's headed. The demand for AI infrastructure is here today, but additional datacenter capacity takes years to build. Feeding AI hunger has become a supply chain problem. It's demand that can reach 92 MW and will certainly go higher, when the full force of AI requirements are evaluated.

As organizations push to realize the benefits of AI, they are increasingly challenged to deliver the necessary data to fuel their initiatives. While most have data repositories to draw from, the quality and accessibility of that data can be an issue. Shiv Trisal of Databricks and John Schirripa of S&P Global Market Intelligence, join host Eric Hanselman to explore the nature of these challenges and ways to address them. One of the major benefits of AI tooling is the democratization of access to data and it has to be a primary goal, but it's not always easy to achieve. It means pulling together complex data sets and being able to wrap the necessary controls around them. Governance concerns demand better data quality at the outset, to make the path to implementation simpler.

This week's guests:Shiv Trisal, global industry lead for manufacturing and industry at DatabricksJohn Schirripa, VP, product management, distribution solutions, at S&P Global Market Intelligence