When it comes to generative AI, these are the companies that come to mind Google, MetaAND OpenAI. But don’t leave Amazon out of the AI race.
One of Amazon’s greatest specializations is cloud computing, where Amazon Web Services is the market leader. The online tech and retail giant did this too built-in internal chips to power the cloud and has partnered with OpenAI rival Anthropic on the infrastructure to enable large-scale AI modeling.
Deepak Singh, vice president of AWS, spoke to Quartz about how generative AI is impacting Amazon. Here are some highlights from the interview.
Where Amazon stands in the generative AI race
Singh said Amazon has long used machine learning, such as robotics in its fulfillment centers or checkout-less Amazon Go stores. Singh said Amazon invested early in generative AI in two areas. One of them is to provide cloud infrastructure to people building artificial intelligence models. Last year, for example, Amazon launched Bedrock, a service that helps AWS users build and scale artificial intelligence models. The second area is providing features that lend a hand AWS customers build generative AI applications faster.
In other words, instead of leading in the so-called big-language models that power AI-generating products like chatbots, Amazon is focused on providing the infrastructure to host these AI models.
“Generative AI has been incorporated very directly because the cloud exists,” Singh said.
“Both [Amazon CEO Andy Jassy] AND [AWS CEO Adam Selipsky] I would like to say that we are at the beginning of a marathon,” he added. “Every day we learn modern lessons about the possibilities of multilingual models.”
Thinking about generative AI tools in the office
“If you’re a developer, especially a modern developer, there’s a good chance you’re using generative AI on a daily basis,” Singh said. Enormous-language models, or LLMs, are good at coding, in part because there is plenty of open source code in the world for AI systems to learn from, he said.
Singh added that Amazon employees are starting to apply the company’s own internal AI chatbots to write marketing copy.
How is working in a company during the period of generative artificial intelligence different from previous technology cycles?
“When AWS launched, I still had to answer many questions, such as why the bookstore building was there [cloud] infrastructure?” Singh said. “You know, I haven’t heard that in 15, 14 years or something like that. A lot of years.” At the same time, companies have been more reluctant to migrate to the cloud, which makes it easier for companies to run websites and applications.
But now, Singh said, “your biggest, trashiest bank has jumped straight into the deep end [of generative AI]”
“But again,” he added, “I think as they have embraced the cloud over the last few years, it has become easier for them.”
