Google has some advantages, like massive amounts of computing power for storing, sorting and automatically editing photos and the money to buy photo start-ups like Nik Software, maker of Snapseed.
"At Facebook we have massive amounts of computing power and data and the question is how we can best take advantage of that by combining old and new techniques," posited Johnson.
It envisions a demand for massive amounts of computing power as industry tries to absorb the tremendous amount of information generated by the map of all human genes being made available by Celera Genomics and the government-funded Human Genome Project.
Just as cloud computing enables us to quickly and cheaply spin up massive amounts of computing resources for things like gene sequencing or the analysis of radio telescope data, it can also be used to brute-force passwords or decrypt sensitive personal information.
Big data is also processed quickly and requires massive amounts of computing power.
Scientists and engineers use a similar paradigm to make use of massive amounts of compute and data handling resources provided by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The company's platform runs on a $100,000 appliance with massive amounts of compute and storage capacity (think a four-node server with 96 TB of hard-drive storage, combined with 6 TB of flash storage).
Because of the rapid generation of new data, availability of massive amounts of compute power and ease of use of new ML platforms (whether it is from large technology companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft or from startups like Dato), we expect to see more and more applications that generate real-time predictions and continuously get better over time.
With Bitcoin, to generate (or mine) bitcoins, you required an ASIC machine; this often required a massive amount of dedicated computing power to mine the coins.
Companies are already leveraging massive amounts of cloud computing for the newest generation of smart cameras, but we are also beginning to see new levels of intelligence in the cameras themselves.
