Amazon Q: Generate Apps on AWS

PLUS: AI's Report Card

Author

AI For All
May 03, 2024

Sponsored by

Hello readers,

Welcome to another edition of This Week in the Future! AWS made Amazon Q, its native AI assistant, generally available, while also throwing in a native app generator for enterprise employees. Plus, a tidal wave of AI reports and reviews.

Let’s get into it!

Amazon’s Not Q*

AWS has made Amazon Q (not to be confused with the rumored Q* from OpenAI) generally available. AWS claims that Q is “the most capable generative AI-powered assistant today.” There are multiple variants that include:

Developer: For coding tasks, Q is said to possess multi-step planning and reasoning capabilities that can transform and implement new code from natural language prompts.

Business: Q can answer employee questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks securely based on enterprise data.

Amazon Q Business also comes with Amazon Q in QuickSight, allowing analysts to generate dashboards and complex visualizations in minutes.

Apps: With Amazon Q Apps, employees can build AI-powered apps from company data with natural language. Simply describe what you want, and get a functioning app.

Why This Matters

Given the market share of AWS, native AI features could make it the go-to destination for enterprise AI services simply out of convenience. IBM recently expanded its software availability (including AI) on AWS Marketplace, and Amazon engineers are developing ways to remove unwanted data from models, which could be a huge selling point for cautious enterprises. Long story short: don’t count out Amazon.

AI’s Report Card

Image generated by DALL·E 3

A wave of reports and reviews have come in for AI. As the technology gets rolled out more and more, reactions are mixed and the future is uncertain. Let’s take a look:

Scale published their 2024 AI Readiness Report, which provides insights into how companies are thinking about, using, and benefitting from generative AI. 58% indicated a lack of suitable tools and frameworks as a challenge holding back their AI projects. Scale also published a study scrutinizng the merit of AI benchmarks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise published a report that revealed that businesses are overconfident in their AI strategies despite implementation gaps. HPE provides guidance on filling those gaps. The report surveyed 2,400 IT leaders across 14 markets.

Additionally, Google published a report on the economic impact of generative AI and Microsoft provided further transparency on their responsible AI efforts while signing a deal for renewable energy to power their AI operations.

On the consumer side, dedicated AI devices like the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 were universally panned for being unfinished, extremely limited, and unnecessary, and the Meta AI assistant has made Meta’s apps unusable according to users.

Our Take

What is the point of AI? It’s about building synthetic gods that conquer the universe better SaaS products. For enterprises, the potential value of AI is clear, but fully realizing that potential takes proper implemenation. The pressure will be on for AI providers like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta to show actual returns from their AI investments, which will probably come from cloud computing. For consumers, AI devices have a longer way to go, and adding AI to established apps will need to be done thoughtfully.

🔥 Rapid Fire

📖 What We’re Reading

“In a recent survey, Algolia gathered insights from 1,100 adults to delve into consumer perceptions regarding the potential of AI to enhance the ecommerce landscape. The findings are illuminating. It's time for the industry to dig deeper and understand where shoppers' minds are, asking: do consumers have concerns about AI-driven retail and, if so, what are they?”

Source: AI For All
How to Overcome Data Obstacles and Summit Mount Data

“Despite data analytics and artificial intelligence being top of mind for many organizations, many executives still bristle at the idea that data can add new insights to their intuition and experience. A common misconception lies at the heart of this idea: that data replaces experience. The reality is that data and AI doesn’t replace experience, they augment it. And it’s no secret that data and AI, when combined with experience and automation, can be transformational.”

Source: AI For All
Leveraging the Power of AI in Retail Operations

“Over the past five years of my career in data science and artificial intelligence, I’ve worked with several clients in different industries. Retail is one of my favorite verticals because AI has a great deal of potential for success in this area. Retail businesses, as well as retail software providers, need to know about how AI works practically in the industry, as this allows them to improve workflows, gain an edge in the market, and increase sales.”

Source: AI For All

💻️ AI Tools and Platforms

  • Sweetspot → Leverage AI to bid on government contracts

  • Mendable → AI that answers customer and employee questions

  • TheyDo → Convert customer research into journey maps with AI

  • Datastax → Generative AI stack for production-ready apps

  • Hazelcast → Data management for real-time and AI applications

The Rundown is the world’s fastest-growing AI newsletter, with over 500,000+ readers staying up-to-date with the latest AI news and learning how to apply it.

Our research team spends all day learning what’s new in AI, then distills the most important developments into one free email every morning.