The New Frontier of AI: Key Takeaways from AWS re:Invent 2022
Even with a career spanning decades in technology, the speed of innovation and how it impacts our lives and virtually every industry never ceases to amaze me.
I recently attended the AWS re:Invent conference, where next-gen tech trends are on full display. This was my fourth time attending re:Invent and the first time attending in-person since the pandemic. Several technical leaders from Dignari attended the conference, some for the first time.
A HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE
During the weeklong event, held November 28 - December 2 in Las Vegas, our team worked on developing new skills in the BuilderLabs, exploring the latest innovations in cloud performance, and learning new ways to transform data into meaningful, actionable business intelligence – an increasing imperative for every organization.
Amongst the bevy of new service announcements, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the prevalence of new tooling continued to dominate. Add to this the recent ChatGPT announcement from OpenAI, and suddenly you realize just how low the barrier to entry may be and how far we’ve advanced.
THE NEW FRONTIER OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
If you’ve ever interacted with a chatbot, you know it can become increasingly frustrating. Canned responses are too often encountered, and often the bot punts to a generic reference on Google. ChatGPT provides the exact opposite experience – a comprehensive, coherent, contextual, and conversational interaction with the machine. Its responses are multi-disciplinary, quickly shifting from basic email templates to writing and debugging code and even translating how to inform the user. For example, I asked it to explain code deployment in DevSecOps as if I were a 5-year-old, and I received a story about recipes and baking cookies that actually made sense.
However, humans are not yet out of the loop. If you do a quick Google search for ChatGPT failures, you’ll quickly discover that it is not all-knowing and is not at the level of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)…yet. I know this firsthand because when I asked who the CTO of Dignari was, it named a colleague.
Seeing the new capabilities of AI is always fascinating. Yet, it's still a bit frightening with AI making appearances everywhere – from an AI film festival next year to self-portrait and meme generators like Lensa, ready-made AI applications are changing the landscape of social media, our classrooms, our ability to more quickly develop and deploy code, and frankly our lives. It’s a "Pandora’s Box" of opportunity or one step closer to Skynet and machines running the world, depending on how you look at it.
As we go into the New Year, we know these advancements will continue to present opportunities for consumers, businesses, governments, and individuals. From edge computing to the evolution of AI, VR, ML, and IoT – the acronyms, and real-world applications for these innovative technologies, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. There are many interesting insights on the evolution of ‘emerging’ technology, including AWS's 6 key trends driving machine learning and innovation and McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2022.
ZERO TRUST & NEXT-GEN BIOMETRICS:
For Dignari, these trends present opportunities to help drive innovation and support the myriad ways government delivers services to citizens – from next-generation biometric identity verification in the travel continuum to Zero Trust strategies to defend against malicious actors in the cyber realm.
This is also why Dignari places such strong emphasis on recruiting the highest caliber experts. IT is not only an in-demand field globally, but dozens of sub-specialties require a growth mindset and continual upskilling to stay current with this ever-advancing field. This commitment to staying on the cutting edge is part of the Dignari Difference.
CONCLUSION:
As we reflect on 2022, we are grateful for the clients who trust us to help solve complex problems, leverage technology to improve business processes and implement human-centered design, regardless of the application. We look forward to continuing to accelerate smart, secure solutions that positively impact citizens and federal stakeholders in 2023.