Breathe
By Pamela Cerdeira
This Monday, the Mobile World Conference began in Barcelona, an event that brings together the most relevant of the technology industry and where the conversation has revolved around Artificial Intelligence (AI), the digitization of virtually every aspect of our lives and where we are going to store all that information. But what does all this mean for us mortals?
It's no longer just about having a computer or a smartphone. The global economy is migrating toward completely digital business models. From how we order a cab to how we pay our bills, technology is reshaping the way we interact with the world.
Artificial Intelligence has become everyone's business. Now, leading companies are using AI to gain a competitive advantage, optimize their operations and deliver better services. This means that AI is directly impacting the way we work, consume and live.
In Peru, the first port using remote-controlled and autonomous trucks has been implemented, improving efficiency and safety. In China, hospitals at different levels are using 5G networks and AI to make medical resources more accessible. In Shanghai, China, Huawei and a regional hospital launched Ruipath, which rapidly deployed AI inference devices, enabling the analysis of one million pathologies and covering 90% of the types of cancer diagnosed in that country, providing doctors with intelligent assistance for early detection, diagnosis and treatment.
Data is the new oil: For AI to work effectively, it needs large amounts of data. The availability of real-time data has become a key factor in the success of any AI initiative. This raises important questions about how we collect, store and protect our information.
And how much data do we create? If you thought their apprehension made them hoarders, here it goes: in 2024 approximately 149 zettabytes of data were generated globally. (1 zettabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 gigabytes, so 149 zettabytes is 149,000,000,000,000,000 gigabytes). It is estimated that 400 zettabytes will be generated this year .
Let's visualize it. If we consider that a sheet of paper with 500 words in Arial 12 weighs approximately 2000 bytes, 149 zettabytes, that is, in 2024 it would be equivalent to hundreds of billions of sheets of paper. And if we imagine it in the weight of a sheet of paper in the real world, the cumulative would be equivalent to 335 trillion tons of paper, 500,000 times the total weight of humanity or more than half the mass of the Earth.
This growth reflects the exponential trend in data generation, driven by factors such as: increase in connected devices, the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), intensive use of social networks and digital platforms. And artificial intelligence and machine learning generate and process large volumes of information.
