Amazon: “Innovation and courage” needed to respond to rise of AI

“It takes a lot of courage and innovation” to meet the computing needs linked to the revolution of the artificial intelligence (AI), says Prasad Kalyanaraman, head of data centers at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the technology branch dedicated to the cloud.

“Building the right technology, both in terms of consuming the least amount of energy and optimizing it, from the chips we use to the centers that contain the servers… requires a lot of innovation,” he said.

LOOK: When charging a cell phone, should you connect the device or the charger first?

With the explosion of generative AI (including programs like ChatGPT) and its applications in terms of productivity, companies around the world want to take the plunge, or at least experiment.

To keep up, they need advanced software and, above all, more processing power. That’s why they turn to the cloud giants, a market dominated by AWS.

Kalyanaraman, vice president of AWS Infrastructure, is responsible for ensuring that Amazon’s data centers around the world are ready to meet the challenge. Especially given that the group’s two main rivals in the cloud, its American neighbors Microsoft and Google, are leading the race to deploy generative AI tools.

Costs and connectivity

Amazon, a pioneer and leader in online commerce, launched its cloud business in 2006 when the group realized that its partners and third-party providers did not want to invest in expensive computer rooms themselves.

“We realised that it was very difficult for our customers to get involved in building this IT infrastructure. So why not provide it to them?” – a bit like utility companies bring electricity to homes, Kalyanaraman explains.

AWS now accounts for nearly 20% of the company’s total sales and generates about two-thirds of its profits.

And with the emergence of generative AI, Amazon, like Microsoft, has announced the construction of new state-of-the-art data centers around the world, often from scratch.

“These are fairly large projects,” says the executive. “First of all, we obviously have to find enough land (…). In general, we set up far from the big cities” for reasons of cost and the environment.

Connectivity is also a key factor, because customers want high computing speeds that come from being closer to their data.

In addition, a power source and power lines are needed to transport the electricity.

Energy and optimism

A graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and Queen’s University in Canada, and an Amazon employee for nearly twenty years, Kalyanaraman spent much of his time working in software before being given the keys to the computer servers.

“Most people are using the cloud without even realizing it,” he says. “If you watch a streaming video or go to your bank’s website to check your transactions, you’re using the cloud.”

WATCH: This pill-robot seeks to put an end to endoscopy: it has a camera and travels through the body

Despite their myriad uses and abundant tax revenue for communities, the proliferation of data centers also causes some exasperation.

Buildings can creep into an area’s bucolic landscape and place a huge strain on local energy supplies, overloading already fragile power grids.

The executive acknowledges that energy has become “a limited resource in the world, especially with generative AI.”

“It’s not something that can be changed overnight,” he continues, but AWS “is the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the world today. And has been for four years running.”

AWS has committed to becoming a net-zero carbon company by 2040.

Kalyanaraman, a typical techno-optimist, is convinced that innovation will come to the rescue. “Every time we have faced a limitation, we have found a way to innovate,” he insists. “I see it (AI) as an opportunity.”