The recent Google Cloud Next 24 conference was perhaps unsurprisingly dominated by AI, with a series of new announcements and launches from the company providing the latest salvo in a future that will increasingly be dominated by AI.
Google Cloud has long been at the forefront of advancing AI innovation, with CEO Thomas Kurian saying he was proud to have a full AI-ready tech stack, from the company’s own Axiom hardware to software solutions ranging from chatbots. to video making apps.
To learn more about why AI will undergo such dramatic changes sooner rather than later, Ny Breaking spoke with some of Google Cloud’s leading AI experts.
Rising
“Generative AI is now real and is creating value in enterprises in almost every industry… I don’t know of an industry where AI isn’t being applied in some way,” said Will Grannis, VP & Chief Technology Officer of Google Cloud.
“In just eight months, the pace and scale of adoption, of usability, of usability and real-world use cases has skyrocketed… every business will benefit from this.”
The AI industry is moving from an exciting new breakthrough technology to manufacturing at scale. This increasing use, in line with adoption, is accompanied by a growing awareness of responsibility and security of Google Cloud itself.
“These types of technologies supercharge the work we do every day,” Oliver Parker, Vice President, Global GenerativeAI GTM at Google Cloud, told the event when asked about the capabilities of AI: “(and) it’s a great technology, but it must be applied very carefully.”
“In many ways we are now recognized as a leader in AI,” Grannis adds. “AI has always been a fundamental ambition and strategy. If you go back to the beginning of Google, if you want to create AI, you have to have structure, you have to have an index, and you have data, and you have to structure that data so that these models will ultimately be useful… and now We’ve brought these capabilities to customers so they can go on the same journey.”
The company has long leveraged the power of its AI infrastructure and services internally, a process that Parker is “drinking its own champagne.”
“I don’t want to underestimate what that means in terms of being able to deliver an end-to-end set of capabilities for a business,” he notes.
“The ability to use the generative AI capabilities, this big context window and start extracting data – that’s how you start to open up some use cases that I don’t think people would have thought of before because the technology is wasn’t even. “
He is not the only one to emphasize this point; Brad Calder, Vice President and GM of Google Cloud Platform, also tells us how this view is proving to be an incredibly useful differentiator in the field.
“I think what’s special about Google is that we actually created the innovations around Gen AI,” he says, highlighting the “huge pivot” the company made in early 2023 to focus on AI.
“If you look at what our opportunities are, how we have pushed for innovation around AI, both from a model perspective and from a platform perspective, this has given us a huge opportunity when it comes to the cloud,” Calder added .
“We are the only company that actually has the models, the hardware, the stack and the cloud, all in one place to integrate and optimize vertically and horizontally… I really believe this gives us an edge – you have it not yet seen anything close to AWS… in terms of how we actually amplify AI.”
Parker adds that Google is also seen as a strong transformation partner, especially when it comes to its understanding of data and AI. “We’ve proven that we understand how that technology stack applies to business outcomes and digital transformation better than any other option in the market,” he says.
“AI is the manifestation of the cloud’s potential,” says Grannis. “The tools and capabilities around infrastructure, platforms, applications and development – this used to be the domain of large organizations just because they had a lot of developers, a lot of machines, and a lot of business processes that allowed them to create applications.”
“Cloud was the first wave of democratization, because without data centers and without tens of thousands of developers, you could create experiences that defined markets… so now you have a foundation in AI, which is actually delivered by the cloud. …you have tools and capabilities that allow customers to use their own data and their own business process knowledge and their own insight to combine these models and create real competitive advantage.”
So now that AI will take away many roles from real employees, what is the role of humans in the AI-powered enterprise of the future?
Parker is optimistic, noting, “Integration with the human experience is really important, and I don’t think you’ll ever displace human interaction experiences – you’ll just provide enhanced experiences that actually enhance them.”
“There is always some concern when these types of technologies emerge, but we have always been very thoughtful as a company to understand and recognize the impact.”