While Microsoft and Google may draw a lot of attention when it comes to AI, there are more than two dogs fighting over the bones. During the AWS Summit in Amsterdam, the cloud giant made it clear that it doesn’t stand aside, but it doesn’t need to be in the spotlight either.

At the entrance to the RAI conference hall in Amsterdam, drums are played. Fortunately, the press has access via a side entrance, so we don’t have to queue. The cloud giant AWS is organizing its regional summit for the Benelux countries and thousands of supporters don’t want to miss it. It was also several years since the conference settled back in the Dutch capital.

The room where the opening lectures take place also fills up quickly. We can again use our press privileges to grab a seat in the front rows. After a brief welcome from Marielle Lindgren, who heads up all AWS departments in Northern Europe, it’s Andy Warfield’s turn (Distinguished engineer). It doesn’t take long for a much-used acronym to appear on his slides: AI. The adjective “generative” is also inextricably linked with it today.

The tone was immediately set. “It’s something I’ve never seen in my career. Generative AI will bring about a profound transformation. Companies that aren’t working on it yet really need to ask themselves what’s holding them back,” says Warfield. Words that sound a bit cliche, but not empty, from a man who has been in the IT world for more than twenty years.

A piece of the cake

It should come as no surprise to those present that AWS spoke so explicitly about generative AI at its event. After all, not a day goes by in the tech world that people don’t talk about technology. But it’s mostly about what the tandem Microsoft-OpenAI and Google are doing, who want to develop against each other on the best system. Sometimes AWS seems to be on the edge. The company is only too happy to rectify this during the summit.

Constantine Gonzalez, Main Solution Architect, immediately emphasizes that AWS does not see itself as an outsider in the AI ​​scene. He points out that the company already has twenty years of experience in machine learning. He also prefers to avoid using terms like “race” and “competition” when talking about the latest developments in (generative) AI.

“I don’t see AI as a cake that everyone has to get a piece of. The cake keeps getting bigger. Competition should not be the main goal. We must ensure that access to AI and ML technologies remains democratic so that small businesses can be part of something big,” Gonzalez preaches. Whether this is a stab under the table by Microsoft and Google, we’ll let you interpret.

Competition shouldn’t be the primary goal in AI development. We must ensure that access to technology remains democratic.

Constantin Gonzalez, AWS Principal Solution Architect

bedrock

The rapid flight of the competition must have worried Gonzalez and his colleagues at least a little. AWS recently did an interim sprint with the announcement of bedrocka platform on which business models such as titanium And Stable spread is available to customers to create their own applications. With this, AWS wants to ensure that companies that want to experiment with AI continue to come to them.

With Bedrock, AWS is adding a new layer to the AI ​​layer of this ML ecosystem, Gonzalez tells us. If we continue his cake metaphor, the cake is shaped by hardware. Maintaining the AI ​​requires a lot of computing power and with Graviton, Inferentia And training AWS offers multiple generations of GPU chips optimized to handle heavy ML workloads.

The second layer, the icing on the cake, consists of the machine learning platforms. Perhaps AWS’ best-known solution for this is SageMaker, which launched in 2017. Bedrock can therefore literally be seen as the icing on the cake and serves to make generative AI “ready for use” for companies.

While the competition conquers the world with their ready-made chatbots, AWS lets its customers build them themselves. Gonzalez: “Our mission is to offload infrastructure for businesses so they can focus on innovation. Give people the right tools and let them be creative with them.”

A nudge in the back

AWS also wants to give companies a lifeline in other ways to avoid drowning in the wild AI sea. A week before Bedrock’s blockbuster, the cloud giant announced the new one AI Accelerator program To give startups both a technological and structural boost to realize projects with generative AI. AWS, in turn, naturally has the opportunity to connect young companies to its infrastructure.

Marius Mueller-Minde speaks with great passion about this project Market leader in the startup segment takes towing service. “Startups solve the problems that established players ignore. In this way, they also challenge us to keep innovating. But it’s not easy to be a start-up today, and the media often idealizes this with success stories. Many start-ups fail because they cannot set up their network. You can have the best idea, if nobody knows your brand, nobody will buy your product.”

This wild benefactor will of course be on display during the summit. There is a real one on the trading floor startup loft furnished, where Müller-Minde will be happy to guide us. In this cozy corner, local start-ups get the chance to introduce themselves to a wide audience. We also meet some Belgian companies. The innovation corner on the other hand has the same goal, but in this corner it is more about demonstrating innovative applications, which of course were made possible thanks to AWS.

Those who need physical relaxation between all the networking can kick a football, have their shooting technique analyzed or experience what it feels like to be in an F1 car. There is also (not quite so) hidden commercial talk behind these sports facilities: Thanks to cooperation with Formula 1 and the German Bundesliga, AWS is more than just a foothold in the sports world. A few free-kicks teach us that a few years of football retirement has fortunately not affected shooting technique too much.

The eureka moment

If the Amsterdam Summit should teach us anything, it is that AWS has no intention of watching from the sidelines. It may not be literal, but AWS is in the AI ​​race and just wants to win it, but in its own way and not by copying the rest. However, no one knows yet how this race will develop.

Gonzalez: “We are at the beginning of a new era. Companies achieve great things with AI, there are interesting discoveries almost every day. It is important that we continue to share our knowledge. The more we know about a technology, the better and safer we can use it.”

Warfield also decides that the further development of AI will not be a sprint but a marathon. “Innovation has historically been seen as that ‘eureka moment’ where everything suddenly falls into place. But this one moment is preceded by a long process of research and experimentation. I think that and what you do with the breakthrough afterwards is much more fundamental to innovation.”

After the passage in Amsterdam, the European tour of AWS is over. The preparations for the annual High Mass re:Invent in Las Vegas can thus begin step by step. We already dare to predict that generative AI will also play a leading role here. Or maybe not, things can change that quickly in the tech world.