Keeping up with the machines, new supercomputer will be NZ's most powerful for AI
Friday, 16 April 2021
New Zealand is scrambling to stay ahead of the artificial intelligence curve as it loses its early advantage and others ramp up their investments.
Academics argue we can’t ever hope to be at the front of a pack led by China and the United States, but they say falling too far behind could mean losing control of key systems in a future where artificial intelligence (AI) will be critical to national prosperity.
Nationally and globally AI is being seen as a major growth opportunity. Management consultants at PWC and McKinsey have touted massive numbers around what this technology could add to global GDP – US18 trillion (NZ$25t) by 2030 in PWC’s case and US$13t in McKinsey’s.
An online conference hosted by Bloomberg last week revealed chief executives around the world ranked AI ahead of Covid-19 in terms of the potential long-term disruption it could cause to their businesses.
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A draft strategy on AI is floating around the corridors of power in New Zealand with a discussion document and then a final strategy likely to be released by the end of this year.
University of Waikato Professor Albert Bifet says New Zealand needs to be strategic about its investment in AI because more automation will make these sorts of technologies a lot more important in future.
“This could change how many things are done. And for countries this is really, really important … in Europe now they’ve realised this and they are also investing a lot of money but I think they are a bit delayed.
“This is why it is really important for New Zealand to have a national strategy because it’s very important to decide where to focus.
“It’s clear that with the size of New Zealand we cannot compete with the US and China in everything, so we need to decide what are the most important things that we could make a difference in.”
As part of New Zealand Inc’s quest to keep up the University of Waikato has bought the country’s most powerful supercomputer dedicated to machine learning, and it also plans to set up an institute dedicated to artificial intelligence which Bifet will head.
Two weeks ago representatives of seven universities converged on Hobbiton for a discussion about the new artificial intelligence institute.
Bifet pulled an old party trick at the meeting that he often uses at gatherings like these.
He pulls up Google’s data on most searched terms in the United States and compares the number of people who mention Hobbiton, one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions, to the number who mention a piece of domestically-developed machine learning software.
The Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (Weka), developed at the university, always wins.
“It is really, really prestigious in all the universities around the world, but this is something that is not very well-known in New Zealand,” Bifet says.
“It was the first one in Java which was open source … the other one was R from Auckland.
“I think 90 per cent of the universities around the world are machine learning using these tools and nobody knows about it.”
The University of Waikato has used the sale of Weka commercial licences to fund the purchase of the Nvidia DGX A100. Other supercomputers like Niwa’s machines are more powerful but dedicated to analysing things like metereological patterns. This will be the most powerful computer in the country dedicated to artificial intelligence.
It sits in near the bottom of an unassuming stack of nondescript black boxes underneath the university’s library. In some ways you can’t miss it. The machine’s exterior is gold-plated with a large Nvidia logo on it.
Is there any reason why it’s coloured in gold? Not really, it just looks better.
Then there’s a deafening roar. Something akin to a jet engine. That’s the sound of two doctoral students logging onto the server, Bifet explains.
The noise comes courtesy of a network of powerful fans which fire up to cool the computer down as it works through various AI models.
Which is why it’s chilly when you stand in front of the machine, but near-tropical when you step into the small area between racks where the temperature jumps to a coat-shedding 30 degrees Celsius.
The computer is using artificial neural networks – computer software styled on the human brain – to learn how to make predictions in particular areas using a process called “deep learning”. The model makes its own predictions then tests these against real world results and is trained by humans to recognise what went wrong in a quest to create a more accurate model.
Powerful models with billions of parameters come out of this process, which in theory allow these machines to eventually produce useful information and predictions from very large quantities of data. And these computers can now process much larger quantities of data than they could in years past.
Artificial Intelligence institute associate director Jannat Maqbool says if we don’t retain some AI capacity domestically, our companies will be at a disadvantage, especially if overseas players create products which don’t really suit our own needs and priorities.
Some of these could be environmental. Scientists might develop models capable of predicting the weather, but not for our own unique circumstances. Which could put our industries at a disadvantage because they wouldn’t have access to the kind of powerful predictions their overseas counterparts do.
Same too for electricity. What if other countries are able to use a lot more electricity because of AI? AI might allow them to better predict when renewable energy will be available and what time of day people will need to use the most electricity.
Maqbool says New Zealand also has specific needs because of digital connectivity issues around the country.
“We don’t always have cloud access to be able to send data out of a forest or even 45 minutes out of Hamilton.”
So, if our primary industries are going to be able to use these technologies they won’t be stored in the cloud, they’ll have to be located closer to where the crops are being harvested or the cows milked – which might not be a development priority for AI specialists overseas.
“It’s about how do we as a country use this technology in terms of our industries, not just look at other industries and see how they have used it.”
Computer and mathematical sciences Associate Professer Te Taka Keegan says a top priority for him is making sure AI is used to deliver solutions for Māori as well.
Overseas players aren’t going to bother designing neuro-linguistic models which might allow machines to respond in Māori or to predict how people from different Iwi groups might react to situations. They won’t be too interested in creating health system AI which might produce tailored health solutions for Māori either.
He sees it as part of the university’s mission to make sure these sorts of applications come out of this AI institute too.
“Waikato is on Māori land for a start. So there is kind of an obligation.
“From a Māori perspective, I think if any university were to do it, it would be Waikato University for all of those reasons.”
Despite the enthusiasm, Bifet knows there is also a vein of scepticism around AI as well, thanks to the industry’s history of “AI winters”.
These are where over-optimistic predictions and overinvestment in AI leads to massive underinvestment after its initial promise falls away. Usually this is because development hits an unforeseen technological “wall” of some kind.
His counter-argument to whether we will hit a similar wall this time is that many of these deep learning technologies are already being used to power common consumer applications on phones and computers.
Although Bifet acknowledges one wall we could hit is around the machine’s ability to reason.
We might be coming to grips with deep learning models, but we have been less successful at producing computer programmes which have a real understanding of why things are happening. Still, he’s optimistic we can find some way to increase the capabilities of AI models in this respect too.
“It’s the future. We cannot predict what’s going to happen.”