Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly considered a strategic technology that can provide significant economic, social, and military advantages. However, many types of advanced AI research require not just massive amounts of data, but also massive amounts of computing power. To make progress, researchers rely on hyperscale cloud computing infrastructures, which can provide stupendous amounts of compute in a scalable, on-demand fashion.
The ownership of these infrastructures is highly concentrated: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together hold an estimated 70% of the global cloud infrastructure market, which includes the market for GPU compute used in AI research. The infrastructure is moreover extremely geographically concentrated. For example, Amazon’s P4d GPU instances are housed in giant data centres situated in just seven locations in the world: Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Seoul, Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Dublin. In most countries AI researchers thus have to ship their data abroad to train a model. Governments are struggling to finance viable public alternatives. Efforts to develop distributed training infrastructures of sufficient scale remain nascent.
This project seeks to map the political geography of this computational infrastructure that underlies advanced AI by answering the following research questions:
Lehdonvirta, V., Wu, B. and Hawkins, Z. (2023) Cloud empires’ physical footprint: How trade and security politics shape the global expansion of U.S. and Chinese data centre infrastructures. Available at SSRN.
Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research
Project role: Principal Investigator
Vili Lehdonvirta examines the politics and socio-economic impacts of digital technologies. He is one of the world's most cited authors on gig work and the platform economy. His current research deals with the geopolitics of digital infrastructures.
MSc Student
Project role: Researcher
Boxi Wu works in Google DeepMind's Ethics & Society team alongside their part-time studies in the MSc in Social Science.
Former MSc Student
Project role: Researcher
Zoe has worked on technology policy in think tanks, politics, industry, and as a diplomat. She undertook an MSc in Social Science of the Internet, researching the relationship between content moderation and international relations.
With Professor Vili Lehdonvirta
Watch Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta deliver his talk "Cloud empires’ physical footprint" at the Digital Governance Research Colloquium at the Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance.
This programme supports research on AI, Government and Policy.
