AWS pours fuel on the generative AI flames

Public cloud giant AWS has opened an initiative designed to promote the development of generative AI startups.

It’s called the ‘Generative AI accelerator program’ and invites startups with bright ideas in that field to submit applications from today. The top ten applications will be announced later this month, who will then get lots of training, mentorship, and resources from AWS, as well as some AWS credits to enable them to build-out their concepts on the platform.

“Building on the exciting new developments around generative AI, we are happy to launch the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a 10-week program designed to take the most promising generative AI startups around the globe to the next level,” blogged Howard Wright, Global Head of AWS Startups, when the scheme was first unveiled last week.

He was presumably referring to the rapid evolution of the GPT model and many like it, in what has quickly turned into an AI arms race. Tech giants around the world have focused their attention on developing their own generative AI models, for fear that their competitors may steal a march on them.

Observing this unconstrained AI frenzy, a group of industry insiders published a public letter calling for a general pause in AI development, to give the regulatory and ethical framework a chance to catch up. The fact that AWS launched this initiative just a week later shows its position on the need for restraint in AI development.

Presumably Amazon is hoping one or more of these lucky competition winners will prove worthy of acquisition in order to assimilate their bright ideas into its generative AI offering. It would be well advised to tread carefully on this, however. Not only is Big Tech under close political and regulatory scrutiny in the US and elsewhere but they also seem to have got the memo regarding the dangers of unbridled AI development.

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