In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are transforming industries and reshaping customer experiences. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has played a pivotal role in this transformation, with a long-standing commitment to AI and ML technologies. Now, AWS is poised to lead the charge in the next wave of AI innovation by making Generative AI accessible, practical, and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes.
AWS’s journey into AI and ML began over two decades ago, powering customer-facing services on Amazon.com and optimizing internal operations with AI-powered robots in warehouses. This extensive experience has positioned AWS as a leader in the field, driving innovation at every layer of the ML stack, including infrastructure, ML tools, and purpose-built AI services.
“Suddenly we now have the capability to train these very large models and really build those Generative AI models to drive a variety of things. A lot of the examples that you’ve heard of a lot lately are probably around enhancing potential customer experiences. We’ve seen it with chat or virtual assistant assistants, but we also have a lot of our customers that are using, for example, AI-powered contact centers or hyper-personalized kind of environments. We see a lot of Generative AI starting to be used to really boost employee productivity,” according to Olivier Klein, AWS Chief Technologist in Asia Pacific and Japan during a recent press briefing that I attended.
Making Generative AI Accessible
AWS has always been committed to democratizing AI and ML, making it accessible to organizations of all sizes and across industries. This same approach is now applied to Generative AI. AWS is determined to remove the barriers that have historically limited the adoption of this advanced technology.
The technology company offers Amazon EC2 Inf2 instances powered by AWS Inferentia2 chips, which provide high performance, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for running demanding generative AI inference workloads at scale. These instances deliver superior throughput and lower latency, resulting in up to 40% better inference price performance compared to other EC2 instances.
Earlier this year, AWS introduced Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that simplifies generative AI application development. Bedrock offers easy access to pre-trained Framework Models (FMs) via an API and includes Amazon Titan FMs — a family of industry-leading models developed by AWS.
A developer tool now made generally available for free is Amazon CodeWhisperer. It supports over 10 programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and SQL. This tool facilitates the development of generative AI applications without requiring specific expertise in Framework Models.
“And when you run the Generative AI applications with Amazon Bedrock or Amazon SageMaker, it always runs within your environment, your account, and you are in full control of how that model is being used. Most customers will probably always use that model in a private setting. There might be other scenarios,” Klein added when I asked about the safeguards employed by AWS for data privacy and security.
AWS Generative AI Innovation Center
To further support the adoption of Generative AI, the company introduced the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center in June 2023. This program, backed by a US$100 million investment, connects AWS AI and ML experts with customers globally. It aims to help organizations envision, design, and launch new generative AI products, services, and processes, fostering innovation across industries.
AWS’s commitment to making Generative AI accessible and practical is a significant leap forward in the world of AI and ML. Business leaders can now leverage AWS’s extensive infrastructure, ML tools, and purpose-built AI services to harness the power of Generative AI without the barriers of complexity and cost. With the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, organizations have a dedicated partner in their journey to unlock the full potential of Generative AI, reshaping industries and customer experiences in the process. As Generative AI becomes more accessible and pervasive, it’s clear that AWS is at the forefront of this transformative wave.