Amazon CEO Andy Jassy believes that artificial intelligence is both the biggest risk and the biggest opportunity facing companies. "The opportunities and risks are very similar, and there is this hugely transformative and disruptive technology in generative AI that you can't get through any conversation without talking about it," Jassy said at a dinner in Davos on Thursday.
Jassy said that before the coronavirus outbreak, companies were mainly modernizing existing technologies to innovate and reduce costs. But the pandemic prompted them to consider saving money by any means necessary, and a few years later, the mainstreaming of generative AI had them dreaming of cost savings on an entirely different level.
Now, they appear to be at an impasse over how to proceed. "I see a lot of companies trying to prioritize whether to continue modernizing their technology platforms or whether to spend all new engineering resources on generative AI," Jassy said.
But he added that it's not as simple as picking an option. If companies don't have their own technology infrastructure, it will be difficult for them to succeed in the field of AI.
"Being able to modernize your technology and move to the cloud is a sure win. To me, it's a predictable return," Jassy said. "But at the same time, it would be foolish not to figure out how to successfully use generative AI capabilities."
Jassy said it ultimately has to be a balance, with each company prioritizing what's best for them. He predicts that most companies will likely choose a more certain path forward, modernizing their technology and then investing in one or two AI projects that benefit customer experience and learn how to use AI to succeed there.
Amazon has been researching artificial intelligence for years, but only announced the launch of a commercial chatbot called Q in November 2023. The chatbot is built on 17 years of Amazon Web Services (AWS) knowledge and is designed to help employees streamline tasks and communications, generate blog posts, summarize content, and write and analyze code.
Amazon also invested about $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company founded by former OpenAI employees. In March 2023, Anthropic launched its artificial intelligence chatbot Claude to a wide range of users.
Jassy said Thursday that Amazon is currently developing about 60 other AI applications, but added that the AI revolution is still in its "early stages."
"It's like stepping into a marathon," he said.