Just in:
Experts come together to support updating the city’s nature conservation masterplan // AI Boost for Galaxy Devices: Samsung Expands One UI 6.1 Update // Near Miss at Kolkata Airport: IndiGo Plane Makes Contact with Stationary Air India Express // Hope for Respite as UAE Endorses UN Plea for Gaza Truce // AIA Hong Kong Wins More Than 20 Accolades at MPF Ratings MPF Awards, BENCHMARK MPF of The Year Awards and Bloomberg Businessweek Top Fund Awards // Party Nominees Refusing To Contest: Major Perception Threat For BJP // Hong Kong Seen Granting Mainland Investors Access to Crypto via ETFs // Renewables Surge Sets Record, But Global Equity Lags // Konica Minolta is named ASEAN 2023 Market Leader in Colour Light and Mid Digital Production Printers // Sunshine’s Debut Features Leave Tech World Scratching Its Head // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Wed, 27 Mar 2024 // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Thu, 28 Mar 2024 // Infineon and HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering jointly develop ship electrification technology // Arvind Kejriwal Gets International Heft Against The Deshi Vishwaguru // Arvind Kejriwal Was Used By BJP In 2011 Movement To Take On The Congress // Meta Earth Official Website Launch: The Pioneer Explorer in the Modular Public Blockchain Domain // Lisboeta Macau’s world first LINE FRIENDS PRESENTS CASA DE AMIGO and BROWN & FRIENDS CAFE & BISTRO has officially opened // Ajman Celebrates Conclusion of Ramadan Activities with Grand Ceremony // Sharpening the Focus: Sharjah Health Department Refines Evaluation Criteria for “Healthy Schools Programme” // In Lok Sabha Polls In Punjab, AAP Is Advantageously Placed As Against Its Three Rivals //
HomeFT SelectCloud computing titans battle for AI supremacy

Cloud computing titans battle for AI supremacy

c4abe53c 8fcd 11e6 a72e b428cb934b78

A new battle is breaking out among the titans of cloud computing, as competition in the fast-growing sector shifts to a fresh arena: artificial intelligence.

Amazon is the latest tech company to join the fray, boosting its focus on artificial intelligence at a time when Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, is locked in competition with Microsoft and Google.

ADVERTISEMENT

AWS, which sells computing and data storage services to IT professionals, is the fastest growing and most profitable part of Amazon. Sales in the past 12 months grew 60 per cent to $11bn, making Amazon’s cloud business the largest in the world.

Amazon has embarked on a fresh push in artificial intelligence, recently unveiling three new AI services and investing in a deep learning framework, MXNet, which will power its future AI efforts.

Amazon already uses artificial intelligence in many aspects of its business — from ordering robots around warehouses, to identifying scenes in movies, to powering Alexa, its voice-recognition service. However researchers say that the company lags behind its rivals when it comes to pure research in artificial intelligence.

“They are playing catch up,” says Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist who heads the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Google and Microsoft have for years led the field in terms of AI research, he said, while Amazon and Apple have trailed behind them, but are now waking up to the importance of building their AI capabilities.

“In fairness, they are getting stronger,” he added, referring to Amazon. “But the question is how long it will take them to reach where Google and Facebook are, because Google and Facebook aren’t standing still either.”

Amazon says it has “thousands” of engineers working on artificial intelligence, but the company has been secretive about these programmes and has published few scientific papers about its AI efforts.

Last week, Amazon Web Services launched three new artificial intelligence services: one for image recognition, one for natural language understanding and one that helps a computer to read text out loud. While these services were already in use internally — for example Lex, which processes natural language, is used by Amazon’s Alexa — the launch marks the first time they will be available to outside developers.

“It’s not something that we talk about a lot, but we’ve found tremendous success internally with machine learning,” says Matt Wood, head of product strategy at Amazon Web Services. He says AWS is already working on more AI services, which will be launched next year.

However, one of the challenges has been that Amazon’s AI work is scattered in small teams throughout the company — for example, the engineers working on book recommendations may have little contact with those working on facial recognition software — making pure research difficult.

Amazon has considered building its AI capabilities through acquisitions, but has yet to make any big deals. Earlier this year the company examined Turi, an AI group based in Seattle, but Apple won the bidding process instead, paying around $200m for the start-up.

Mastering artificial intelligence is critical for Amazon because AI will be a key source of demand for cloud computing as more complex algorithms require more computational power.

“The workload for these data sciences services is going to be a big money generator,” says Al Hilwa, software analyst at IDC, referring to AI services that can be applied to large amounts of data. He estimates that less than 1 per cent of AWS’s workload today is based on these types of service, but expects this to rise quickly. “That is why everyone is falling over themselves to offer capability for data science,” he says.

Even though Amazon is still playing catch up in the science of AI, Mr Hilwa says the company has an advantage given the reach of AWS, which is much larger than the cloud divisions at Google or Microsoft in terms of revenues.

“You can expect the adoption to come faster because of the critical mass that they have in the cloud,” he says, referring to Amazon’s AI services.

Via FT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT
Just in:
Konica Minolta is named ASEAN 2023 Market Leader in Colour Light and Mid Digital Production Printers // Hope for Respite as UAE Endorses UN Plea for Gaza Truce // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Wed, 27 Mar 2024 // Sunshine’s Debut Features Leave Tech World Scratching Its Head // Arvind Kejriwal Gets International Heft Against The Deshi Vishwaguru // AI Boost for Galaxy Devices: Samsung Expands One UI 6.1 Update // Ajman Celebrates Conclusion of Ramadan Activities with Grand Ceremony // HSBC Streamlines Gold Investment for Hong Kong Residents with Tokenized Product // AIA Hong Kong Wins More Than 20 Accolades at MPF Ratings MPF Awards, BENCHMARK MPF of The Year Awards and Bloomberg Businessweek Top Fund Awards // Arvind Kejriwal Was Used By BJP In 2011 Movement To Take On The Congress // Andertoons by Mark Anderson for Thu, 28 Mar 2024 // Experts come together to support updating the city’s nature conservation masterplan // Universal Language for Healthcare: General Authority Embraces Global Coding System // Employer Obligations Tighten: 30-Day Deadline for Emirati Employee Registration with GPSSA // The World’s First & Wettest Party: “S2O Hong Kong Songkran Music Festival” proudly returns Get an immersive water and music experience on 8-9 June during Dragon Boat Festival long weekend at Central Harbourfront Event Space! // In Lok Sabha Polls In Punjab, AAP Is Advantageously Placed As Against Its Three Rivals // Infineon and HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering jointly develop ship electrification technology // Renewables Surge Sets Record, But Global Equity Lags // Meta Earth Official Website Launch: The Pioneer Explorer in the Modular Public Blockchain Domain // Hong Kong Seen Granting Mainland Investors Access to Crypto via ETFs //