Big Iron Returns

Centralized power is, once again, de rigueur

Hi everyone,

This chapter covers a lot of ground—from the rise of big data and heavy computational demands to the quiet return of Big Iron. But beneath the technical story lies a deeper pattern, one we've seen before: the centralization of power and control.

In its modern incarnation, AI has been absorbed into the infrastructure of Big Tech. It no longer feels like an open field of inquiry, but a proprietary engine—one that shapes markets, public discourse, and even the way we think. The implications are immense, and we would be wise to consider not just what these systems can do, but who owns them, who steers them, and what kind of world they’re building.

The year was 2012. A deep learning system known as AlexNet—named after its lead designer, Alex Krizhevsky—beat all comers at the annual ImageNet competition. Its performance classifying Flickr photos was remarkable, with an accuracy over 10 percentage points better than the second-best system. AlexNet heralded a new era in AI—and was quickly cloned. Deep learning systems soon dominated the field. Headlines about AI’s sudden resurgence splashed across tech media. Elon Musk famously warned that we were “summoning the devil.”