Amazon CEO Andy Jassy doesn’t think the retail and cloud computing behemoth should be written off just yet in the fight for artificial intelligence.
Jassy disputed the idea that Amazon has lagged behind in AI as Microsoft and Google integrate chatbots into consumer goods like their search engines in an interview, comparing it to the “hype cycle” prior to the “substance cycle.”
“I think most people are focused on the applications, things like ChatGPT brought everybody’s awareness up, but I believe of generative AI as having three macro layers,” Jassy said in an interview with Jon Fortt that aired on “Closing Bell Overtime” late on Thursday. “I believe they are all very significant and large.”
“At the bottom layer is the compute that all of the machine learning, training and inference, which are the predictions from the models that are going to be run on and what matters in that computer is the chip in there…Bedrock is that middle layer where it allows people have a foundational model that they can build their applications on top. That third layer which I was about to get to that top layer is the application layer,” he said.
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According to Jassy, Amazon plans to make investments in artificial intelligence across the board because they can enhance “virtually every customer experience.” However, he singled out Amazon Web Services as a company that can profit long-term from the excitement surrounding AI.
Earlier this year, AWS announced a generative AI service called Bedrock that allows users to create their own chatbots and image-generating tools using language models from Amazon and other firms.
The CEO also said that Amazon will compete with Nvidia, a market leader in AI chips because of its potent semiconductors. Inferentia and Trainium, two AI-specific AWS chips, are designed to make it simpler for programmers to run expansive AI language models in the cloud.
Amazon anticipates that its chips will offer “much better price-performance than you’ll find anywhere else,” according to Jassy. Jassy claimed that Amazon has a significant advantage in AI because of Bedrock, Amazon’s proprietary processors, and other services like CodeWhisperer, which produces and suggests code for engineers.