Near‑free AI forces a redesign of data systems for agent swarms
AI inference costs have collapsed from $30 per million tokens to under $1, making near‑free intelligence a reality. The BAIR team argues this shift forces a redesign of data systems: they must serve swarms of AI agents, manage agents’ long‑running state, and be trusted when agents build their own systems. These three challenges will reshape how we store, query, and verify data at scale.