Skip to Content
Artificial intelligence

Ambient AI Is About to Devour the Software Industry

December 1, 2017

Amazon has casually unveiled what could turn into a fundamentally different way to build software.

At its AWS conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, the company demoed Amazon Cloud 9, an integrated development environment (IDE) that plugs directly into its cloud computing platform.

This might seem like no big deal, but it’s actually the latest sign that cloud-based machine learning is about to take the software industry by storm—and, by extension, to rewire the entire economy. Using Amazon’s new platform, developers can collaborate in real time to tap into powerful, cloud-based AI that they can bake into a new generation of apps and Web services. This will mean learning new ways of thinking about software, and it should lead to the rise of everyday software that behaves with more intelligence.

This shift promises to be the biggest transition for the software world in decades. The easy availability of on-demand machine learning, combined with tools for automating the design and training of AI models, should, in fact, have an increasing impact on overall economic productivity, according to some economists.

This helps explain why Amazon, Google, and others are currently engaged in a desperate race to add AI to their cloud platforms, and to make the stuff as easy to use as possible. There are some cool startups in this area, including Paperspace, which lets you get up and running with deep learning on a cloud-based virtual machine in a few minutes, and Pentuum, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University.

But all this doesn’t just set the stage for a mighty battle between today’s tech titans: it’s incredibly cool to be able to fire up a browser and have your code, your data, and a whole bunch of machine learning tools at your fingertips. Tomorrow’s coders don’t know how lucky they’re going to be.

Deep Dive

Artificial intelligence

This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI

The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. 

Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist

An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work.

Unpacking the hype around OpenAI’s rumored new Q* model

If OpenAI's new model can solve grade-school math, it could pave the way for more powerful systems.

Generative AI deployment: Strategies for smooth scaling

Our global poll examines key decision points for putting AI to use in the enterprise.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.