Azeem Azhar

What do I mean by infinite demand?

I don't mean that every atom in the universe will be enlisted for computing, but I'm sure a science fiction writer out there has got a story

on just that subject.

What I mean is practically unlimited, that at each turn of the screw,

Better chips, more sensors, more data, improved algorithms.

We find new things that we want to compute in business, in science, in research, in entertainment.

Better materials, better routings, more efficient stock portfolios.

And of course, that unending array of consumer uses.

We might think that optimizations...

think about DeepSeq will help.

The optimizations like DeepSeq, which reduce the amount of computing you need to get the output that you want, would actually be a break on the amount of compute that is demanded in the global economy.

But as we saw, once you make

the output cheaper, you increase the demand for it.

It's a Jevons paradox.

It's that positive elasticity of demand that I talked about.

Because as the outputs become cheaper, you widen up the range of use cases that were previously too expensive to attempt.

They weren't economically feasible and a software optimization made them more cheap.

They crossed the break-even point.

And so we then created new tasks for them.

And I think that's really important to understand that, of course, optimizations and efficiencies are really, really desirable.