Unicorns, Centaurs, and Cyborgs: Co-design Powering the Intelligence Era

The authors' abstract

This is the paper's own summary, in the paper's own words. It is dense on purpose — abstracts are written to compress.

We are in the middle of a new ''intelligence revolution''. From consumer products to enterprise cloud offerings, and even foundational scientific research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming all aspects of our life. These amazing advances have been made possible by equally impressive innovations in the underlying computing systems powering AI, but the continued pace of growth and change will require even more. In this talk, we will discuss vertically-integrated optimizations in AI infrastructure that have already birthed a new cottage industry of ''unicorns'', ranging from physical data centers & hardware to software and cloud solutions, and identify the exciting opportunities ahead. We will then look forward to future ''centaurs and cyborgs,'' symbiotic partnerships between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence, highlighting the opportunities and challenges when we use AI to optimize AI. Co-design and collaboration, across the hardware-software stack, across disciplines, and across communities, will be key to this exciting new future.