How to Avoid Astronomical AI Computing Costs

Brock Ferguson is a practice-over-theory kind of guy. The Chicago-based data-science and machine-learning consultancy he co-founded in 2016, Strong Analytics, puts a major focus on productionizing AI models rather than just building out proofs of concept. "We want to minimize that gap between research in the lab and deploying to production," he said. "We think about that a lot." That means thinking a lot about cost -- something that's never far from the minds of machine-learning practitioners and consultants, but which came to the forefront again thanks to a much-circulated recent Andreesen Horowitz review that emphasized the high and ongoing computing costs of building and deploying artificial intelligence models.