Unless you were really into desktop PC gaming a decade ago, you probably didn't give Nvidia much thought until recently. The company makes graphics cards, among other tech, and has earned great success thanks to the strength of the gaming industry. But that's been nothing compared to the explosive growth Nvidia has enjoyed over the past year. That's because Nvidia's tech is well-suited to power the machines that run large language models, the basis for the generative AI systems that have swept across the tech industry. Now Nvidia is an absolute behemoth, with a skyrocketing stock value and a tight grip on the most impactful--and controversial--tech of this era.

A government commission is currently considering an innovation that could be as transformational for Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a hadron collider is for physics. It's called a National Research Cloud, and right now the federal National AI Research Resource Task Force (NAIRR) is determining how we can develop such a cloud to broaden access to computing and data and spur basic and non-commercial AI research. At stake may be rates of investment in basic scientific research not seen since the days of the Cold War.

Critics, however, see it as an effort to blunt outside regulation by cities, states or the federal government, and they question if tech companies are best suited to shape the rules of the road. For the corporations, the algorithms will be proprietary tools to assess your loan-worthiness, your job application, and your risk of stroke. Many balk at the costs of developing systems that not only learn to make decisions, but that also explain those decisions to outsiders. When New York City proposed a law in August requiring that companies publish source code for algorithms used by city agencies, tech firms pushed back, saying they needed to protect proprietary algorithms. The city passed a scaled-back version in December without the source-code requirement.

AI is already a huge part of the technology landscape and leading to many opportunities in mobile. Samsung is putting it to use in its Bixby voice assistant and upcoming smart speaker, Google has used it to help turn a person's scribbles into clip art, while Huawei's Richard Yu sees it as an avenue through which the company can overtake Apple, These are somewhat crude examples of the real implications of AI technology, but it's already clear that it's going to play a big role in the future of tech at large. According to a recent report from Russian news site RT, Russian president Vladimir Putin says it could even lead to global domination. In a recent talk with Russian students via a satellite link, Putin said: "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world."