Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has joined the list of CEOs who are so excited about generative AI (and the money it will save their companies) that they can’t contain their joy for everything that is to come.
Jassy believes that generative AI will be the biggest technological revolution since the cloud, and maybe even since the creation of the Internet itself.
In his annual letter to shareholders, Jassy wrote that “generative AI could be the biggest technological transformation since the cloud – which itself is still in its early stages – and perhaps since the internet.”
“Unlike the massive modernization of local infrastructure to the cloud, which requires work to migrate, this [Generative] AI revolution will be built from the ground up on the cloud. The amount of social and business benefits from the solutions that will be possible will amaze us all,” he added.
What does the CEO’s letter from Amazon about AI mean
Jassy mentions AI and GenAI more than 30 times in his letter, emphasizing that he sees technology as fundamental building blocks to improve Amazon’s customer experience and drive the company’s business.
The Amazon’s AI push will be a three-layer effort that will consist of creating foundational models, leveraging and customizing existing ones, and using AI applications, including a smarter Alexa.
Jassy points out that virtually all basic generative AI models have been trained with Nvidia chips. He adds that, although Amazon still offers the widest collection of Nvidia instances of any provider, supply has been scarce and cost remains a problem as customers scale their models and applications.
That is why Amazon has created its own AI training chips, Trainium and Inferentia, as alternatives to Nvidia hardware for training and deploying basic models.
The CEO of Amazon also warned not to underestimate the importance of security when it comes to GenAI, especially because these models contain sensitive data. It is partly the reason why several companies prohibit or restrict their use for official work purposes.
And all to save on labor
Investing in generative AI implies workforce reductions: a recent survey showed that 41% of executives expect technology to reduce the size of their workforce.
Amazon fired about 27,000 workers last year and has been cutting numbers in 2024. Jassy said in his letter that the company is not done with cost reduction and has found areas where it can further reduce them, which certainly sounds like more cuts are coming. The restrictions imposed by Amazon on employees working from home have also caused discontent.
