While AI offers specialized communication skills, it creates new data-storage and security challenges.

Many of us would struggle to grasp the concept of a zettabyte in any practical sense. Mathematically, it's 1 trillion gigabytes and, between we humans and our machines, we expect to generate more than 180 zettabytes of digital data in 2025. Right now, about 330 million terabytes are being introduced into the world every day – that's equivalent to the entire US population filling their OneDrive allowance on a daily basis. According to this essay on the World Economic Forum, storing our data will present major challenges: the way things stand, in 100-150 years' time there will be more data bits than atoms on the Earth and storage will consume more than the total energy generated today.

Problems notwithstanding, our prodigious output is an impressive human achievement. We have progressed through cave paintings, smoke signals, the invention of paper and books, to the many prolific techniques we have available today. It's all about the drive to communicate and express ourselves, which is embedded deeply in our nature.

Our passion for technology can improve services and life experiences for everyone.

Many of us working in the electronics business, wherever we are in the value chain – from design to manufacturing, as well as marketing, sales and support – are more than simple creators of technology. We are also fans, adopters and evangelists. As a species, we have always pursued technologies with the goal of making our lives better.

It's in the interest of humanity that more people can use the technologies we create. Many powerful technologies that define the world we live in today began life as the invention and plaything of a small number of expert users: search engines, digital image sensing, blockchain, AI, even the internet itself, started this way but have become widely used to the advantage of all. This technological democratization is not a new phenomenon. The invention of the printing press is often cited as an early example. In addition to expanding and accelerating the spread of information, its arrival also enhanced the accuracy of the data shared by reducing human error.

For as long as there is invention, action will be needed to mitigate the divide that separates the technological haves and have-nots. The World Economic Forum points out that digital technologies are a driver for fairness and justice, and that equalizing access is essential to safeguard security and human rights. We can celebrate the fact that information services, banking, e-government, and e-health are already widely available and affordable, even in regions that have minimal fixed infrastructures.