“Digital skills will actually become more important going forward in the workplace than your actual university degree,” says AWS.
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00:00But just because it's technologically feasible, doesn't mean we should build it.
00:05It's a great opportunity for us to build better technology for a better world.
00:09I'm very optimistic that we will reach or even surpass that target.
00:21Six hundred billion euros.
00:23That's more than twice Portugal's annual GDP and the projected figure for how much AI could
00:27into the European economy by 2030.
00:29We'll be discussing exactly how this could happen on today's episode of The Big Question.
00:33And we're joined by Sasha Rubel, the head of AI and machine learning at Amazon Web Services.
00:38Sasha, great to have you on the show.
00:39A report by Strand Partners calculated that 600 billion euros could be unlocked by AI
00:45for European businesses by 2030.
00:48How realistic do you think that is?
00:49And kind of what barriers could potentially stop us from getting there?
00:54So I'm an optimist at heart.
00:55And so I'm very optimistic that we will reach or even surpass that target.
01:01Businesses are ready.
01:02But one of the things that we identified in this commissioned report is that there are
01:06really three key blockers hindering the large scale adoption of AI.
01:12The first is regulatory certainty.
01:14Companies that were concerned about the lack of regulatory certainty
01:17plan to invest up to 48 percent less over a three-year period in artificial intelligence.
01:23So ensuring the regulatory certainty necessary
01:26for companies in the EU is an absolutely crucial element for AI adoption.
01:32The second blocker that was identified was the lack of digital skills.
01:36So more than 60 percent of the companies that we surveyed identified a lack of digital skills
01:43in their workforce as one of the key barriers for AI adoption.
01:47But when we talked to employees, employees said, look, we would love to learn new skills,
01:52but we don't have the time.
01:53And the cost of these classes are above all prohibitive.
01:57And it's one of the reasons why at the end of last year,
01:59Amazon Web Services launched our AI ready commitment to train more than 2 million people
02:04by 2025 in AI ML.
02:07And we made available alongside our machine learning university
02:10more than 80 classes for free online that teach you not only what artificial
02:16intelligence and machine learning is, but also what it means to develop and deploy it responsibly
02:21so that there's a general understanding that just because it's technologically feasible
02:26doesn't mean we should build it.
02:28And so we have classes that are dedicated to things like bias and fairness
02:32and responsibility that we see is super key alongside the technical literacy.
02:37The third element that we noticed is that there's a huge gap between bigger companies
02:43who are adopting AI up to 51 percent at a faster rate than smaller companies.
02:48So around 31 percent.
02:50And so our focus and our DNA is really about democratizing access to this innovation.
02:55And the cloud plays a really important role in that.
02:57Not only does the cloud reduce the carbon footprint of innovation up to 80 percent.
03:02And in fact, when AWS is powered 100 percent by renewable energy, which we aim to reach by 2025.
03:10So five years in advance, up to 96 percent more efficient.
03:14And this means that people can innovate responsibly and they can also innovate sustainably.
03:25So thinking about this adoption of AI,
03:27is it really beneficial for all industries?
03:29And are there any sectors that are lagging behind currently?
03:31That's a great question.
03:33One of the things that we see currently is that generative AI can actually unlock value across the board,
03:39including in industries that you would intuitively think to yourself,
03:43oh, this is definitely a great use case for generative AI.
03:47One is agriculture.
03:48One of our customers, Grohe, is using our AI services to improve vertical farming
03:55to address a very big challenge, in fact, around the world right now,
03:59which is access to quality food and reduction of hunger.
04:02And we have seen firsthand the ways in which deployment of AI in vertical farming
04:08not only increases the yield, but also the quality of the food.
04:12And then another area that I'll share with you and one of my favorite use cases is the area of health.
04:18So we are working with a startup named Huron AI.
04:21Huron AI is a startup that began in East Africa that's being used now far beyond East Africa.
04:28Huron AI was developed because in Rwanda, there are 13.5 million people and there are 15 oncologists.
04:36That means that there's one oncologist per 3,200 active cancer patients.
04:42If you compare that to, for example, in the United States,
04:45where there's one oncologist for 300 cancer patients, the gap is dramatic.
04:50The other challenge is that a lot of these patients are living in rural areas
04:54where traveling and accessing a doctor is a challenge.
04:58And so we've been working with Huron AI to actually deploy a generative AI solution
05:03that allows cancer patients to get personalized medicine and advice in order to address,
05:09for example, side effects or symptoms so that they can be tracked more easily
05:14by doctors that are otherwise really hard to access.
05:17And so this is completely changing the ways in which people think about their health.
05:25So thinking about where the position that we're in currently,
05:29what's kind of the most tangible profit that AI has already delivered to businesses in Europe?
05:33What we're seeing right now, particularly after the large scale growth of generative AI in 2023,
05:38we saw in the EU, for example, an increase in AI adoption of 32%
05:43and an increase of cloud adoption of 30%.
05:46And we see really this adoption of generative AI across industries
05:51because there's a recognition that this technology will radically transform
05:56the way we work, the way we live, and the way we learn.
05:59In terms of profit, one of the first things that we hear from our customers
06:02is the question of productivity.
06:04So one of the things that we've developed at Amazon Web Services
06:07beyond Bedrock is really a service called Amazon Code Whisperer,
06:12which takes the heavy lifting out of coding.
06:15So software developers all of a sudden are increasing their productivity
06:19and can actually focus on more exciting creative tasks related to coding
06:24instead of the very repetitive tasks
06:27that is a huge part of the daily life of software engineers.
06:29So the question of an increase in productivity
06:32is one of the biggest returns on investment that we see already.
06:41And so thinking of that kind of return of investment,
06:43is that benefit the same for big businesses and kind of SMEs?
06:47Who has the most to gain from AI implementation?
06:50So bigger businesses across the EU are adopting AI at around 51%,
06:55whereas smaller companies are adopting AI at the rate of around 31%.
06:59And it's actually one of the reasons why AWS has placed such an emphasis
07:04on empowering startups, which are the backbone of the EU economy,
07:08with the necessary skills to be able to adopt AI.
07:11So we have initiatives like, for example, our Generative AI Innovation Center
07:15that's specifically targeting how to support small-scale startups
07:19to help them deliver more value, to help them be more productive,
07:22and to help them in reality address some of the biggest challenges of our world today,
07:26like things like climate change or access to education, among others.
07:30And we've also commissioned recent studies that really show that data-driven businesses
07:36invest more in people, in processes, and in technology.
07:41Secondly, what we really emphasize in terms of our customer engagement
07:45is to look at how to build trust in this technology,
07:48because one of the biggest blockers to adopting this technology
07:52is a lack of trust and understanding
07:55in what artificial intelligence and machine learning is.
07:58And so we're convinced that responsibility,
08:01and starting from a point of responsibility,
08:03drives trust, which drives adoption, which then drives innovation.
08:08So really focusing on building that trust through two pillars.
08:12One is investing in skills and digitally skilling their workforce.
08:17And the second is really looking at how to develop and deploy AI responsibly.
08:27So I know lots of people are worried about AI taking their jobs, for example.
08:32But what benefits can employees expect to see
08:35from the implementation of AI in their workplaces?
08:38In terms of value for businesses,
08:40the first that we see in the adoption of generative AI is increased productivity.
08:44So the capacity to take that unstructured data and transform it into insights
08:49is something that could have taken several months beforehand,
08:52but now takes just several minutes.
08:54I'll give you another example.
08:56In the past, when we used to do software updates,
08:59it used to take us more than 100 engineers and more than a month.
09:03Now we've automated that, and we can do it in six minutes.
09:07What I will say is that one of the things that we see,
09:09particularly in terms of the blockers related to digital skills,
09:13is a surprising amount of demographics closer to retirement
09:19that are particularly excited about learning new AI skills
09:23because they know that AI is going to completely transform the future of work.
09:29And again, just as an anecdote,
09:30my 18-year-old daughter wants to be a prompt engineer.
09:34When I was 18 years old, without telling you how old I am,
09:37prompt engineer did not exist as a course of study.
09:42What we're seeing now is that digital skills
09:46will actually become more important going forward in the workplace
09:49than your actual university degree.
09:52And alongside digital skills, the capacity to think creatively
09:56and be able to address through systems thinking solutions
10:00will be one of the most important attributes going forward.
10:04So preparing not only young people,
10:06but also people who are already in the workforce
10:08for this kind of transformation,
10:10so that they can not be replaced by,
10:13but work with and alongside AI is absolutely essential.
10:18Yeah, really super vital.
10:20And so I guess lastly, and here's a personal question for you,
10:24what are you most excited about in the adoption of AI in Europe?
10:29There are two things that I'm particularly excited by.
10:32One is the capacity of how we can use AI
10:35to actually address some of the risks and challenges related to AI.
10:39And I'm super excited by the work that AWS is doing to, for example,
10:43use AI to generate watermarks for audio-visual generative AI
10:47generated content to combat misinformation.
10:51Or how we're developing, for example,
10:53the capacity through AI services to automatically detect
10:57and remove harmful content or child sexual abuse material online.
11:01And so in parallel with the risks related to any kind of growth in technology,
11:06it's a great opportunity for us to build better technology for a better world.
11:11But it's also a great opportunity for us to make ourselves better
11:15so that we are actually developing technology
11:18that is targeting the communities as diverse
11:22as the individuals that should be building it.
11:24Okay, brilliant. Wow, yeah.
11:26And well, thank you so much for joining us on The Big Question.
11:29It's been fascinating to talk to you.
11:31Yeah, thank you so much.
11:32Thank you for the great questions.