Bank of America AI Deep Dive Report: "AI Empowers Everything", the total scale of technology commercialization will reach $16 trillion

Author: Zhao Ying

Source: Hard AI

Humanity is standing at the cusp of a technological revolution. Exascale supercomputers are capable of performing calculations in the hundreds of quintillions per second. The number of crystal structures discovered by AI is more than 45 times that in the history of science. A potential anti-cancer drug was developed in just 30 days. Uruguay has more industrial robots than its population...

In a deep report on March 21st, Bank of America pointed out that 2024 will be the year of "AI empowering everything". There is a huge positive feedback loop forming between the development of AI and other technologies, including artificial intelligence, computing, robotics, communications, healthcare, energy, and 30 other technological fields that are expected to see breakthroughs.

The commercialization of breakthrough technologies is crucial, with Bank of America estimating the related market size to be around $16 trillion.

Historically, technological advancements have led to wealth concentration and rapid turnover of companies. In the past 100 years, 3% of companies have created almost all of the world's net wealth. Since 2015, approximately one-third of the S&P 500 components have been replaced, accelerating market transformation and disruption through technology.

Since the beginning of the AI technology revolution last year, various industries have been accelerating their development. The future will depend more on the implementation and application of AI models. Bank of America has identified five main areas for implementation: edge AI devices, enhanced simulation, knowledge graphs, high-performance computing (HDC), and artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AI "Taking Over" Everything and Forming a "Positive Feedback Loop"

Bank of America points out that the development of artificial intelligence is at a turning point, exponentially changing various industries. The future development of AI will depend on three factors:

1. "Crossing" of Technologies: Mutual promotion between different technologies, such as AI driving the development of computing and communication technologies;

2. "Scarcity" of Technologies: In a world where demand for technology exceeds supply, the growth rate of computing power surpasses the predictions of Moore's Law. The scarcity of data and computing power will become a challenge;

3. "Economics" of Technologies: Technologies are developing towards lower costs and higher returns.

Furthermore, Bank of America believes that 2024 will be the year of "AI empowering everything", with a huge positive feedback loop forming between the development of AI and other technologies.

AI connects and empowers technology, business, and society, driving the development of technological singularities. In this process, the development of computing, communication, and technology provides momentum for the AI revolution, which in turn forms a positive feedback loop, providing more computing power, communication resources, and data, further accelerating AI progress.

Bank of America also discusses the importance of computing power, with so much data but insufficient computing power to keep up.

The demand for computing power is growing at a rate that exceeds the predictions of Moore's Law, increasing by 275 times every two years.

We are transitioning from generating hundreds of quintillion bytes of data per day to millions of exabytes. Over 80% of new renewable energy capacity also requires new infrastructure and materials, which are facing shortages in raw material supply In addition, Bank of America also mentioned that future costs will be further reduced. All these investments in automation, artificial intelligence, and technology are comprehensively reducing prices and increasing returns. For example, despite the capacity of memory drives increasing by over 20,000 times in the past 20 years, the price per gigabyte has decreased by over 99%.

Five Major Application Areas of AI Implementation

Last year was the "Year of AI", and the AI revolution is set to accelerate. In 2023, we witnessed a surge in investment in generative AI. Since the release of ChatGPT, various closed-source and open-source models have been introduced, and companies have begun to develop, adopt, or integrate AI into products or businesses.

Bank of America points out that the pace of innovation will accelerate from here, and more AI tools and applications may soon be launched. This could bring rich opportunities not only in the digital domain but also in the physical fields of end devices, robots, and life sciences.

1. Edge AI Devices: Deploying AI functions/models on local devices (such as smartphones, cars, wearables) helps reduce latency, costs, and power loads on large servers, improving the performance of the entire AI ecosystem.

2. Enhanced Simulation: AI is used to accelerate the discovery process, identify the most feasible simulations, accelerate the creation of new molecules, and reduce costs. What used to take 10 years in the physical world can now be done in a matter of weeks to months. Application areas include drug discovery, chips, chemicals, and materials.

3. Knowledge Graph: Knowledge graphs organize data from multiple sources, capture information about topics of interest, and establish connections between them. They are key to solving the "hallucination" problem of LLM (providing highly confident but inaccurate information) and enhancing the capabilities of neural networks. Data professionals in most organizations typically spend 25-30% of their time searching for and retrieving relevant data.

4. Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC): HDC uses high-dimensional vectors to represent information instead of traditional binary systems. It can capture more complex data patterns and allow computers to retain more memory, reducing computational and energy requirements. HDC can achieve over 60% energy savings compared to the technology used in today's chips.

5. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): AGI, as a virtual assistant, will possess general cognitive abilities that reach or exceed human levels across a wide range of tasks. It can self-learn and solve tasks not pre-programmed With the growth of data, improvement in computing power, and technological innovation, AI may reach an IQ of 1500 in the next ten years, which is 18 times the average human IQ.

Bank of America added that despite the many benefits AI brings, there are also challenges such as power consumption, cost, algorithm/software optimization, and security issues for edge AI devices. Overall, the Bank of America report predicts that by 2030, AI could add around 15%-20% of economic value globally.