South Africa is not only keeping up with the world in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), but in many cases leading the field, says Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud-computing provider.
In an exclusive interview with Business Times during this week’s AWS re:Invent 2023 conference in Las Vegas, Selipsky said AI overturned the conventional distinction between emerging and established markets. This was especially evident in South Africa, with companies such as TymeBank and Aerobotics operating at the cutting edge.
“Those examples tell us that geographies like South Africa are keeping up with the rest of the world and, in some cases, leading the world.
“There's this nomenclature of developing versus developed countries, but I don't think that matters much for things like generative AI. You've got hungry, smart, lean-forward entrepreneurs around the world. You see them in the US, you see them in Europe, you see them in Asia-Pacific and you see them in Africa and, of course, in South Africa.
“Some of these folks that we're currently working with really embody that entrepreneurial spirit. And then you've got larger companies, many of which are also leaning into generative AI. Whether it's retailers or banks or anywhere in between, we're working with them on AI and I think we're going to see quick adoption and usage of generative AI in South Africa-based organisations. I don't see in any way, shape or form that being limited to the US or any other country.”
The re:Invent conference, which drew more than 50,000 delegates, including several hundred AWS customers from South Africa, saw the unveiling of a range of new AI tools.
During his keynote address, Selipsky announced Amazon Q, a generative AI business assistant aimed at companies, with security and privacy at its heart. Likened to a ChatGPT for business, it is designed to help office workers get answers to questions, solve problems, generate content and take action using company data and expertise.
Unlike ChatGPT, which is known to use content posted on its platform to continue training itself — and sometimes includes that content in responses to other users — Amazon Q will not use business customers’ content to train its underlying models. This addresses a major hurdle to enterprise use of AI, after numerous horror stories of confidential information being leaked accidentally via chatbots.
Selipsky was born in Johannesburg to South African parents and moved to the US with his family when he was four years old, but he still has a strong affinity for his birth country — not least because of the role it has played in the AWS story.
“Howzit,” he greeted this writer, before getting serious.
“AWS has a long, long history in South Africa. Our compute service EC2, the Elastic Compute Cloud, was originally built in Cape Town. We had a small team. We were very scrappy. That first version of EC2 was built with about 11 engineers. It was a great team, though, and we grew that team significantly.
“And then, in 2018, we announced that we're going to be building a South Africa-based infrastructure region in Cape Town, which we launched in 2020. From 2018 to 2022, from when we announced that South African infrastructure region, we invested about R16bn into South Africa. From 2022 to 2029 we anticipate investing an additional R30bn.
There are a number of really important, sophisticated customers that need cloud services, from Woolworths and Pick n Pay and Old Mutual to [start-ups] doing really cool generative AI things
— Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services
“It's a really important strategic area for us. We're investing in other ways as well. We really believe in skills and training, and there's this big gap of cloud skills. We want to make sure that there are great cloud skills in South Africa, to serve South Africa, to serve all of Africa and globally.
“We have a skills centre that we've opened in Cape Town and we've trained over 100,000 people on cloud skills. There's more work to do, but we're proud of that. Obviously it helps us, but it also helps South Africa and provides a lot of people with really important skills that we think are going to be really useful for their own personal growth and economic stability over the coming years.”
While the bulk of the R16bn already invested would have been allocated to two Cape Town data centres that form what the company calls an “AWS region”, the next R30bn will be more about investment in infrastructure, people and skills.
However, Selipsky did not rule out the possibility of AWS regions in the rest of Africa.
“Between the regions we have in the Middle East and the region of Cape Town, we have coverage of broad swathes of Africa in a very effective way. But we're very open to building more regions as demand dictates.”
In South Africa, demand ranges from small start-ups to giant corporations.
“There are a number of really important, sophisticated customers that need cloud services, from Woolworths and Pick n Pay and Old Mutual to [start-ups] doing really cool generative AI things. It spans many different industries.”
Selipsky said Amazon Q would “be able to give you tailored, relevant interactions, whether you're a lawyer, an accountant, a product manager, a designer or a manufacturing supervisor”.
