How AI Is Changing the Network(s)

As is always the case, this started with a simple question: Will AI change how networks work? Will it impact the speeds we need at home and on our phones? My assumption was that AI would accelerate this — personal AI agents querying the cloud all day, your house talking constantly to a model (or models). A lot of this is still wishful thinking. My attempt to find an answer led me down a whole new path of inquiry, with surprising results. The real action is happening far away from the madding consumer crowds. None of this was surprising, considering I have covered the evolution of the internet and its innards since the early 1990s. Internet 1.0, Internet 2.0, the cloud, mobile, data and machine learning, and now AI are all part of a continuum that has challenged and scaled the network, helped evolve new technologies, and introduced new ways of thinking about ever-expanding oceans of data. AI is only supersizing everything, including the sheer scale of capital it needs to build…