Season 4 Episode 19: AI Agents, Responsible AI Adoption, and Cloud Earnings

In Season 4, Episode 19, Karl and Jon are joined by Rob Pankow, Simplyblock CEO to discuss the new AWS EBS snapshot acceleration feature, the evolution of AI agents, AWS’s guide for responsible AI adoption in financial services, and how to use Amazon Q Business to gain insights from AWS Trusted Advisor. They also touch on cloud hyperscaler earnings and market share—before realizing they had spent more time talking about Jon’s t-shirt than the actual AWS news.

 

04:55 - AWS EBS snapshot acceleration feature 

This new feature allows users to accelerate the transfer of data from an Amazon EBS snapshot to a new EBS volume. It offers two tiers of initialization rates, ranging from 100-200 Mbps and 200-300 Mbps, with associated costs. While it provides faster restoration and initialization, especially beneficial for disaster recovery and high-performance computing, it comes with additional costs that may be significant for large-scale users.

15:19 - AI agents and their development

The article discusses the concept of AI agents, which are more advanced than foundation models and can perform tasks beyond their initial training data. It explores how to build AI agents using JavaScript and highlights their potential impact on various industries. The discussion touches on the challenges of widespread adoption and the need for reliability in production environments.

23:36 - AWS guide for responsible AI adoption in financial services 

AWS has released a guide on governance, risk, and compliance for responsible AI adoption within the financial services industry. The guide, available through AWS Artifact, aims to help financial institutions navigate the complexities of implementing AI technologies while adhering to regulatory requirements and best practices. The article's disappearance from the AWS Security blog raised questions about potential updates or revisions to the guide.

30:21 - Using Amazon Q Business for AWS Trusted Advisor insights 

This article explores how Amazon Q Business can be used to obtain faster and more actionable insights from AWS Trusted Advisor. The setup involves creating a custom business application, integrating with Trusted Advisor data, and connecting to project management tools like Jira. While the concept is promising, the implementation requires significant effort and may not be as seamless as desired.

39:08 -Cloud hyperscaler earnings and market share   

The article discusses the recent earnings announcements from major cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud). It highlights the continued growth of the cloud industry, with AWS maintaining its market leadership despite slower growth rates. The discussion touches on the inconsistent reporting methods between providers and the significant financial resources required to build and maintain a hyperscale cloud infrastructure.