If you sat last month nearly spilling your under-cooked TV dinner wondering what in the world is this announcement about a overseas company who has released a ground-breaking and revolutionary application in the AI race that made headlines and sending the US stock market into a downturn? 

Well, you are not alone.

I’ve worked in metropolitan Philadelphia IT for over twenty years. For most of that long tenure, I’ve seen incredible advances in technology as well as the very bolstering of the IT backbone that allows Philadelphians to live and work each day without interruption. With the growing anticipation of the capacity needed for this new AI world, we professionals too live with the uncertainty of exactly what those futuristic needs will look like.

When it was just talk — no more than a rumor or a whisper started about the coming AI craze among we technologists — no one was quite sure what that would mean. We also didn’t anticipate how quickly that it would come to the forefront of not only IT, but society as well.

With the growing anticipation that AI technology is going to impact almost every piece of our daily lives in the not-to-distant future, how will this latest launch affect Philadelphians and the region? Don’t let that TV dinner get cold quite yet: good news is on the way. No matter what, the growing obsession with AI has the promise bring many benefits to Philadelphia.

More IT infrastructure for AI means more data centers in order to support the infrastructure. More data centers mean more redundancy that will ensure that all Delaware Valley residents can stay connected for work and leisure. Let’s disruption means more productivity alongside the confidence that you’ll stay connected. All of which is good for business in Philadelphia.

More IT infrastructure means more jobs for our region. The jobs will not only be in the growing field of AI Innovation — but in the critical support positions that will need to support that IT infrastructure for AI to work. The metro Philadelphia region is still trying to recover from the 2,700 tech jobs lost in 2022 and 2023. Currently, only around 2,400 of the approximately 329,000 Philadelphia technology area positions are related to AI. 

It was last month when President Donald Trump announced that a joint venture of OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle that will construct additional national data centers; which will make necessary the creation of around 100,000 US jobs for AI infrastructure. Before leaving office, the Biden administration pushed through legislation through that would allow the additional AI data-centers and Electrical Power Plants to be constructed on US Federal Lands. 

Philadelphia, which ranks as the number two city for tech talent and community as of 2024, will see a rise in not only in technology jobs but also in AI innovation itself. More technology means an economic boost for Philadelphia as well in a city that currently already boasts the presence of every modern innovation in technology from AI to Fintech.

AI is here, whether we like it not. Technologically speaking, it brings with it an opportunity to better our citizens as well as our city. What we all must do now in order to embrace this revolution in our region as well as across America is to encourage as much regional growth for IT infrastructure and IT careers as possible. We must encourage our elected officials and legislators as much as possible to elevate this as a top priority. If we do, we’ll not just be ahead of the AI curve: we’ll be benefiting from it.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt is a principal network infrastructure project manager and has worked with network infrastructure for over twenty years.