Cloud computing

In the past, a company bought its own servers and kept and managed them in a server room. With the cloud, a large company fills data centers with servers and rents them out over the internet in whatever amount you need. The user buys no equipment and pays only for what they use. Keeping your photos in online storage instead of on your phone is cloud use too.

Most AI is used through the cloud as well. Companies rent servers with AI chips by the hour to train models, and call AI models made by other companies from the cloud. Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud are the best-known examples. It is convenient, but it is easy to get tied to one company, and you should think about handing your data to someone else's facilities.

It is like having a water supply and paying for what you use, instead of every house digging its own well. You do not need to know where the water comes from. You just turn the tap.

News keeps coming of AI companies signing big deals with cloud companies. Knowing who rents whose facilities lets you see the partnerships and rivalries in the AI industry.