As Google races with Microsoft and OpenAI to develop world-changing generative artificial intelligence, some critics see Amazon as falling behind.
Adam Selipsky, Amazon’s head of cloud, said in an interview with AFP that he “respectfully disagrees” with that view.
Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Meta have made headlines with stories about their base models or the base models of their close partners. These models are key to AI and its ability to generate text, images, video, and even computer code from simple user prompts.
But “there’s not going to be a single model that governs them all,” Selipsky argued.
At AWS, Amazon’s industry-leading cloud division, customers are already “requiring multiple models for multiple different use cases,” he explained.
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He cited the capabilities of various AI models available on the AWS Bedrock platform, including Anthropic’s Llama and Claude from Meta, as well as France’s Mistral and some of Amazon’s own Titan brands.
In Silicon Valley, generative AI is believed to be poised to revolutionize the way people work.
And cloud computing companies with huge computing power, large amounts of data, and AI expertise are now hosting generative AI models. They are in a great position to take advantage of new technology, but they have a lot to lose if they don’t embrace the latest innovations.
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Amazon, an e-commerce pioneer, also dominates the cloud. According to Stocklytics, AWS accounted for 31% of the cloud computing market at the end of 2023.
But rivals Microsoft and Google are rising in the cloud business, with market shares of 24% and 11%, respectively.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says Microsoft is “in the driver’s seat” of the ongoing cloud revolution thanks to a $13 billion investment in OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT.
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Microsoft and Google compete with in-house AI-embedded digital assistants that help create content (emails, presentations, ads) and applications (notably chatbots).
AWS is relatively unknown to the public, and its digital assistant Alexa is not yet as conversational as ChatGPT.
But Amazon has been in the AI business for more than 25 years, Selipsky said. “Going back to retail website personalization in 1998, we called it personalization, but it was AI.”
Selipsky said the Seattle company has had thousands of employees working on the technology for years and has pivoted some of them to the new frontier of generative AI.
“We’ve rapidly moved to new generations of (AI) chips like Trainium, built Amazon Bedrock, rapidly adopted it, and brought exciting applications to market on models like Amazon Q. ” says the AI assistant. He said.
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Selipsky, who took the helm of AWS in 2021, replacing Andy Jassy, who took the chief executive role vacated by founder Jeff Bezos, is confident Amazon will continue to be a leader in cloud computing. I was confident that it would continue to exist.
He points to AWS customers and partners (including Nvidia) as proof of that.
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The famous chipmaker recently announced that it is building a “supercomputer” on AWS using Nvidia’s own high-performance processors, ultra-high performance and coveted GPUs.
Most notably, Amazon invested $4 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic, which is also backed by Google. The startup will use his AWS and its Trainium chips to build his AI models and help “improve our technology,” Selipsky said.
When asked about the exciting aspects of generative AI, Selipsky cited examples of increased productivity for clients.
Selipsky estimates that AWS user Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, can launch more powerful drugs faster and save up to $1 billion a year thanks to AI.
Airlines and other industries are already using generative AI to power chatbots that interact with customers.
And while chatbots can make mistakes, companies believe that “humans can’t give 100 percent accuracy either,” Selipsky said. “And in many cases, the models actually outperform the accuracy and usefulness of live agents.”
AWS cut hundreds of jobs this month, particularly in its sales and marketing departments, as it focuses more on AI and other priorities.
But Selipsky was adamant that cloud platform workers will not be replaced by AI.
“AWS has thousands of job postings online today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and will be posting again tomorrow,” he added.
