Source: AFP
As Google races with Microsoft and OpenAI to create world-changing genetic artificial intelligence, some critics see Amazon as falling behind.
“I respectfully disagree” with that view, Amazon’s cloud chief Adam Selipski told AFP in an interview.
Tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Meta have made headlines for talking about their own or their close partners’ fundamental models that are key to AI and its ability to produce written works, images, videos or even computer code from simple user prompts.
But “there’s just not going to be one model to rule them all,” Selipski argued.
AWS, Amazon’s flagship cloud division, already sees customers “needing multiple models for multiple different use cases,” he explained.
He mentioned the capabilities of various AI models available on the AWS Bedrock platform, such as Meta’s Llama and Claude from Anthropic, as well as some from France’s Mistral and Amazon’s Titan brand.
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Generative AI is seen in Silicon Valley as poised to revolutionize the way humans perform tasks.
And cloud computing companies, which have massive computing power, reams of data, and AI expertise, are now hosting AI production models. They are in a prime position to take advantage of new technology — but have a lot to lose if they don’t understand the latest innovations.
25 years of AI
An e-commerce pioneer, Amazon also dominates the cloud. AWS had 31 percent of the cloud computing market at the end of 2023, according to Stocklytics.
However, rivals Microsoft and Google are gaining ground with their cloud businesses, with 24% and 11% market share respectively.
Thanks to a $13 billion investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft is “in the driver’s seat” of an ongoing cloud revolution, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
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Microsoft and Google are competing with their in-house AI digital assistants to help create content — emails, presentations, ads — and apps (especially chatbots).
AWS is less well-known to the public, and its digital assistant Alexa is still not as conversational as ChatGPT.
But Amazon has been in the AI business for more than 25 years, Selipsky said. “If you go back to retail website personalization in 1998 — we called it personalization, but it was AI.”
The Seattle company has long had thousands of people working on the technology and has turned some of them into the new frontier of genetic artificial intelligence, Selipsky said.
“We moved quickly to new generations of our (AI) chips, like Trainium, and we built Amazon Bedrock, and we quickly adopted that and came out with exciting applications on top of the models, like Amazon Q,” an AI assistant. he said.
Selipsky, who took the helm of AWS in 2021, replacing Andy Jassy, who took over the CEO position vacated by founder Jeff Bezos, was convinced that Amazon would remain a leader in cloud computing.
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Customers watch AI programs
Source: AFP
As proof, he points to AWS customers and partners, including Nvidia.
The high-profile chipmaker recently announced that it is building a “supercomputer” on AWS using Nvidia’s high-performance processors, ultra-compact and coveted GPUs.
More specifically, Amazon has invested $4 billion in Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor also backed by Google. The start-up will use AWS and its Trainium chips to build AI models and help “improve our technology,” Selipsky said.
When asked about the exciting aspects of genetic AI, Selipsky cited examples of increased productivity for her clients.
AWS user pharmaceutical giant Pfizer estimates it will bring more powerful drugs to market faster, achieving up to a billion dollars in annual savings due to AI, according to Selipsky.
Airlines and other industries are already using generative AI to power chatbots that interact with customers.
And while chatbots can make mistakes, companies are thinking that “not even human beings are 100 percent accurate,” Selipsky said. “And in many cases, the models actually surpass the accuracy and utility of live agents.”
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AWS cut hundreds of jobs this month, particularly in sales and marketing, to better focus on artificial intelligence and other priorities.
But Selipsky was adamant that AI has not replaced any of the cloud platform’s workers.
“AWS has thousands of job postings online today, yesterday and the day before, and we’ll have (them) tomorrow as well,” he added.
Source: AFP