Technology

How Much Data is Generated Each Day?

Published

5 years ago

April 15, 2019

Jeff Desjardins

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How Much Data is Generated Each Day?

View the full-size version of the infographic by clicking here

You’ve probably heard of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes.

These data units are common everyday amounts that the average person may run into. Units this size may be big enough to quantify the amount of data sent in an email attachment, or the data stored on a hard drive, for example.

In the coming years, however, these common units will begin to seem more quaint – that’s because the entire digital universe is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020.

If this number is correct, it will mean there are 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe.

A Crash Course in Data

Today’s infographic comes to us from Raconteur, and it gives us a picture of this new data reality.

Before we get to how much data is created each day – both now, and in the future – it’s worth getting acquainted with how data scales in terms of units.

Abbreviation	Unit	Value	Size (in bytes)
b	bit	0 or 1	1/8 of a byte
B	bytes	8 bits	1 byte
KB	kilobytes	1,000 bytes	1,000 bytes
MB	megabyte	1,000² bytes	1,000,000 bytes
GB	gigabyte	1,000³ bytes	1,000,000,000 bytes
TB	terabyte	1,000⁴ bytes	1,000,000,000,000 bytes
PB	petabyte	1,000⁵ bytes	1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
EB	exabyte	1,000⁶ bytes	1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
ZB	zettabyte	1,000⁷ bytes	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
YB	yottabyte	1,000⁸ bytes	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

There’s no doubt that data literacy will only become more important in the future, so make sure you know your zettabytes from your yottabytes!

A Day of Data

How much data is generated in a day – and what could this look like as we enter an even more data-driven future?

Here are some key daily statistics highlighted in the infographic:

500 million tweets are sent
294 billion emails are sent
4 petabytes of data are created on Facebook
4 terabytes of data are created from each connected car
65 billion messages are sent on WhatsApp
5 billion searches are made

By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!

If you think the above information is fascinating, see what happens in an internet minute.

Related Topics:technology future data statistics

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Technology

Visualizing AI Patents by Country

See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.

Published

20 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Marcus Lu

Visualizing AI Patents by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.

From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.

Year	China	EU and UK	U.S.	RoW	Global Total
2010	307	137	984	571	1,999
2011	516	129	980	581	2,206
2012	926	112	950	660	2,648
2013	1,035	91	970	627	2,723
2014	1,278	97	1,078	667	3,120
2015	1,721	110	1,135	539	3,505
2016	1,621	128	1,298	714	3,761
2017	2,428	144	1,489	1,075	5,136
2018	4,741	155	1,674	1,574	8,144
2019	9,530	322	3,211	2,720	15,783
2020	13,071	406	5,441	4,455	23,373
2021	21,907	623	8,219	7,519	38,268
2022	35,315	1,173	12,077	13,699	62,264

In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.

While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.

Key Facts About AI Patents

According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.

In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).

In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.

Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist

If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.