With its recent acquisition of AWS, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made a serious power move on the AI chessboard. They just proclaimed OpenAI’s highest-performing models are now available as an API service. This is a meaningful step in the partnership between OpenAI and AWS. Today, developers have the tools to harness sophisticated AI technology for a wide range of applications. The announcement comes as they face growing pressure in the cloud services space from rivals Microsoft and Google.
During Amazon’s recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy faced intense scrutiny from Wall Street analysts regarding AWS’s position in the rapidly evolving AI sector. Analysts began to worry about Amazon’s increasing market share in particular as other competitors such as Microsoft continue to gain steam. Jassy noted, “I think the second player is about 65% of the size of AWS,” referencing Microsoft’s growing influence in the cloud market.
OpenAI recently released two new reasoning models – GPT-3 model card – under an Apache 2.0 open-source license. These models have achieved state of the art performance that had once belonged to OpenAI’s older products. By providing these models as open-weight options, we empower developers to instantly download them through Hugging Face. This step makes a big push toward increasing accessibility for the tech community at large.
In reaction to these market dynamics, Jassy outlined AWS’s plan to maintain its top-dog status. He understood the competitive pressures that were facing him from companies like Microsoft. He then proceeded to unroll a minutes-long screed full of cutting observations on Redmond. He praised AWS’s relentless focus on innovation and the desire to be dramatically customer-centric.
From AWS’s point of view, OpenAI’s partnership is a major win for the company. Here’s how Jassy explained Amazon’s plan to provide access to OpenAI’s models. Rather than being extensions of existing services, they will live independently on AWS. This strategy is all about increasing adoption of Amazon’s AI services. It improves other tools such as Bedrock and SageMaker AI to let AWS customers train and create their own AI model primarily focused on analytics.
Even the competition in the AI space is becoming more competitive, with Meta reassessing their plans. In fact, just last week Meta admitted that it won’t be able to open-source all of its future “superintelligence” models. Meta’s admission serves as a reminder of how quickly the world of AI is changing. The complaint underscores the need for companies to change their business models to prioritize safe AI development.
Moreover, JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth probed Jassy on the “significantly faster cloud growth among the number two and number three players in the space,” referring specifically to Microsoft and Google. This line of questioning mirrors larger industry worries about AWS’s dominance as other competitors pull ahead with their gambits into AI technology.
Sam Altman’s recent move to partner with Amazon undercuts Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg by aligning OpenAI with AWS’s robust infrastructure and resources. OpenAI’s clever machinations to pit itself against its real rivals in the tech industrial complex. It does so by offering access to the most advanced generative AI models via AWS.