Cloud giant AWS wants the public sector to embrace artificial intelligence – Business

WASHINGTON: Amazon Web Services (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 on Wednesday, AWS 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 will really make an impact,” said Dave Levy, AWS vice president of global public sector 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 scramble to embrace generative AI in the public sector comes as Microsoft’s cloud solutions division and Google Cloud seek to take on AWS’s market dominance.

Generative AI, which took the world by storm with the release of ChatGPT, can generate human-quality content by sifting through piles 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.

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.

Published in Dawn, June 27, 2024