AWS chief Adam Selipsky talks generative AI, Amazon’s investment in Anthropic and cloud cost-cutting – Omaha World-Herald

Adam Selipsky is shepherding Amazons cloud unit at one of the most important moments in tech history.

Selipsky, the CEO of the companys cloud computing unit AWS, has been behind the various generative AI offerings Amazon has rolled out over the past few months as it aims to compete with Microsoft and others in the growing AI arms race.

AWS is a leader in the cloud market and a deeply profitable business for Amazon. However, some of its growth has been slowing down the past few quarters, a problem attributed to customers cutting back on their spending due to challenges with the wider economy.

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky speaks Nov. 30, 2022, at an event in Las Vegas.

Simultaneously, the business has been at the forefront of Amazons push into generative AI, which flooded the public consciousness last year with the release of OpenAIs popular chatbot ChatGPT. During a speech held late November at an AWS conference in Las Vegas, Selipsky unveiled the companys response (kind of) to ChatGPT an AI assistant for businesses called Q.

The Associated Press recently spoke with Selipsky about how companies are spending on cloud services, Amazons investment in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and the future of generative AI. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Companies have been cutting cloud spending this year. Is that still happening?

A: A lot of our customers over the past several quarters have been pursuing cost optimization. Since day one, weve said that AWS and the cloud are the place to do that. Weve seen that a lot of customers have gotten far through that cost optimization. And we have other customers who are still in the middle of it. Were further through it, but its not over yet.

Were also still seeing a lot of customers investing. The companies who are going to win are the ones who are investing now in uncertain economic times when some others are hesitating in their overall investments. And were working with a lot of customers who are doing just that. Were also seeing tremendous interest in our generative AI offerings.

Q: Whats your vision for generative AI?

A: We really think about three different layers of the generative AI stack.

At the bottom layer of the stack is the infrastructure required to to do generative AI. We have a very large Nvidia GPU-based business and have designed and delivered our own custom-designed chips, including our Trainium and Inferentia chips.

At the top layer of the stack is consuming applications that have been built using generative AI. And for that, we have a coding companion for developers.

Q: Speaking of models, there were reports that Amazon is building a large language model called Olympus. Is that something that we should expect to see soon?

A: You should definitely expect to see multiple iterations of Amazons first-party models, which are already out there today under the Titan brand. It goes back to the idea that theres no one model to rule them all. We want multiple models with different use cases. And I expect that they will collectively be very capable and very powerful.

Q: Can you chat with me about Amazons investment in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic? There are reports that Google, which is also backing Anthropic, is upping its investments. Some say this is becoming some sort of proxy war between Amazon and Google. Do you see it that way?

A: No, I dont. We have a very close, very tight relationship with Anthropic thats very beneficial to both companies. Anthropic has chosen Amazon as its primary cloud provider for its mission critical workloads. The majority of Anthropic workloads will run on AWS. Period.

Q: How does Amazon think about safeguards as its building this technology?

A: Responsible AI is incredibly important and something that Amazon has been taking very seriously. We have a number of principles for responsible AI that weve been public about. Weve done things like create these cards for our services, which talk about the uses of the model, the intended use of the model, about how they were trained. We try to provide more transparency into how some of these AI services are constructed and what theyre used for.

We think that a lot of the solutions around responsible AI are going to need to be multilateral solutions. We need a collaboration between cloud industry leaders, folks like AWS, and those producing models, like Anthropic, as well as governments, academia and others. Thats why weve been so active at participating in responsible AI forums at the White House and in the U.K.

Q: Where do you see the AI race going next year?

A: I think youre going to see a very rapid evolution and change. And thats partially reflective of the fact that we are still so early in the evolution of generative AI. Thats why I think adaptability and flexibility are actually incredibly important advantages for customers. In order for them to succeed with their business objectives and to delight their customers, theyre going to need to be very flexible, agile and adaptable in how they evolve their use of generative AI.

In the latter half of the 20th century, TV watchers and moviegoers began to meet a long list of intelligent machines: "The Jetsons'" maid Rosie, B-9 from "Lost in Space," HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," the "Star Wars" saga's C-3PO and R2-D2, and dozens more.

Science fiction laid out some of the basics of artificial intelligence for people, not only by presenting humanoid robotic characters, but also by explaining in dramatized ways the extent to which AI could influence human existence.

In the real world, AI is not a new concept either, even though the recent boom of applications such as ChatGPT might make it seem so. In the 1950s, a generation of mathematicians and scientists explored AI and its applications in human life. However, technology had not developed enough to pave the way for these AI pioneers to put their theories to the test.

In today's era of big data, eight decades after Alan Turing conceptualized the idea of computers thinking and behaving like humans, AI is an intrinsic element of daily lifeautomating everyday tasks that otherwise consume large amounts of time. It has already increased efficiency and boosted performance in the banking, entertainment, technology, retail and marketing fields, among others, prompting the proliferation of jobs related to AI at all career levels in most industries.

Revelo looked at data from a 2022 McKinsey report to see which jobs were the top jobs in AI, examining only companies that have adopted AI in at least one function. TheWorld Economic Forum projects that new jobs will arise and others will be ousted by the changes in tasks performed by humans and machines.

According to aPwC AI study cited by WEF, "any job losses from automation are likely to be broadly offset in the long run by new jobs created as a result of the larger and wealthier economy made possible by these new technologies." It's unclear how long that "long run" might be, but there are plenty of opportunities to get involved in the industry now.

The following analysis ranks jobs based on the percentage of companies that hired for each particular role. The data also looks at the same measurement, but only for "AI high-performers," those companies that are industry leaders in AI.