Artificial intelligence to be hot topic at Collision tech conference in Toronto
Global News
As the Collision tech conference gets underway in Toronto, its chief executive expects much of the chatter at the event to focus on artificial intelligence.
TORONTO — When the Collision tech conference got underway in Toronto on Tuesday, there were two words that dominated discussions across the Enercare Centre: artificial intelligence.
From the speakers that took to the annual event’s stages to the swath of startups seeking investments and exposure, seemingly everyone had something to say about the technology that is poised to upend industries and transform everyday tasks.
“We are three steps into a 10-kilometre race,” said Adam Selipsky, chief executive of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s cloud computing and database storage subsidiary, on stage Tuesday morning.
“So the question is where are the runners going? What’s the course like, who’s watching the race?”
He was questioned about whether AWS is already behind in the race because Microsoft has partnered with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, a hit generative AI chatbot capable of humanlike conversations and tasks that debuted last year, and Google has its own rival product, Bard.
Amazon is at work on its own large language models _ the underlying algorithms and deep-learning technology that AI products often run on _ and is prepared to release it later this year, said Selipsky.
“We have a ton of urgency around generative AI and believe me, we’re putting a ton of resources into all elements of generative AI but no code red because we think we understand where customers are asking us to go and we’re just taking a little bit of a different approach.”
That approach has come as concerns around AI are mounting.