Amazon’s cloud giant AWS wants the public sector to embrace artificial intelligence

Amazon’s AWS, the world’s largest cloud computing company, is making a huge push to encourage the public sector to join the AI ​​revolution as the generative AI race against Microsoft and Google heats up.

AWS and other cloud giants say the technology made famous by ChatGPT could have a huge impact on improving public services, including health, safety, charity and the work of non-governmental organizations.

But getting governments and nonprofits to sign on will be a bigger challenge than convincing private companies — and AWS on Wednesday made available a two-year, $50 million envelope for potential public customers to test ideas.

The public sector market for cloud computing is already important. According to the company, AWS serves 7,500 government agencies, 14,000 academic institutions and 85,000 nonprofits in 215 countries.

The initiative would provide accepted AI projects with access to cloud computing credits, training and technical expertise.

“I see a lot of ideas going on, a lot of use cases, a lot of proofs of concept, things that I think are really going to have an impact,” Dave Levy, AWS vice president in charge of the global public sector, told AFP.

“Getting these things into production is where public sector organizations really need that support and help,” Levy said ahead of the AWS public sector “summit” in Washington.

The fight to adopt generative AI in the public sector comes as the cloud divisions of Microsoft and Google Cloud try to take the lead in the AWS market.

Generative AI, which took the world by storm with the release of ChatGPT, can generate human-quality content by crunching reams of data, something the public sector has at its disposal on a massive scale.

The AWS Bedrock platform provides customers with generative AI, enabling them to access a range of models, such as Anthropic’s Claude model, to power custom AI tools and applications.

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Levy insisted that the benefits of AI will far outweigh the challenges, given how much the technology can do with available data.

In one example of generative AI cited by AWS, Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute built a new research solution using Anthropic’s Claude model to help doctors interpret lab results.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Swindon District Council used the AWS cloud to build a generative AI tool that made complex leasing contracts more understandable.

For now, generative AI, like video streaming and most of life on the internet, requires cloud computing to work.

Industry-wide bets are on the assumption that generative AI, while still in its early stages, can spur growth and accelerate the shift to the cloud once public agencies recognize that AI can play a larger role in their mission.

– “Creating Performance” –

AWS’s AI initiative aims to enable public entities to easily start using generative AI and put aside their skittishness about the technology.

While generative AI is widely expected to change the face of computing in the coming years, it has also experienced a number of gaffes and mishaps, and numerous instances of the technology breaking down are well known.

This may discourage some potential government clients who are afraid of a technology that is less predictable than classic IT.

“Deploying GenAI in the public sector can certainly increase efficiency through task automation, improved service delivery with personalized citizen engagement, and significant cost savings,” said Ryan Cox, head of artificial intelligence at software consultancy Synechron.

“However, there are challenges in the public sector, such as concerns about data privacy and security, ethical issues such as bias and fairness of algorithms, difficulties in integrating with legacy systems, and maintaining public trust,” he added.

There is also concern about the long-term costs of artificial intelligence, which requires large-scale computation.

AWS says it stands out from the competition by putting absolute primacy on security and making sure artificial intelligence is ready for deployment.

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