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AWS Vice President Jeff Barr discusses whether the AI boom marks a true technology shift, how software creation is changing, and what it means for entrepreneurs, developers and future jobs, including in emerging markets like Malaysia.
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00:08all right thank you for tuning in on Niagawani we see that every major technology shift starts
00:13the same way with excitement uncertainty and a lot of big questions so we've seen this before
00:18with personal computing the internet and also cloud so today we're at a moment where technology
00:24isn't just evolving it's accelerating and AI or artificial intelligence is no longer something
00:30happening in research labs or silicon valley it's showing up in everyday tools reshaping how work
00:36gets done how businesses are built and who gets to participate in the digital economy and today's
00:41conversation isn't about speculation it's about what these changes actually mean right now and what
00:47they unlock for the next generation of builders so that's what we want to unpack today joining us
00:51online is vice president and chief evangelist amazon web services aws which is java thank you
00:56so much jeff for joining us this morning how are you i hope you're fine and thank you so much
01:02again
01:02for joining us we see that you've been through multiple tech cycles from the early days of
01:07personal computing to cloud and now specifically on artificial intelligence or AI so from you sit
01:14where you sit today is this AI moment being overhyped or are we generally at a shift as big as
01:20what we
01:21saw perhaps 20 years ago well we we're certainly at the beginning of i think a very exciting cycle
01:29and my sense is that this is going to be big and perhaps bigger than the some of these earlier
01:35cycles
01:35the the cloud cycle as you mentioned the personal computer cycle um to me for a very good reason because
01:41a lot of these early cycles were very very relevant at first to the the the those that are deep
01:48into
01:49technology only and then just over it took quite some time for that to spread to mainstream
01:54what i'm seeing and what we're seeing is that with AI that the the mainstream has picked up on this
02:00very very quickly and is able to to really jump right in and not just to know what it is
02:06and to
02:07understand it and appreciate it but actually starting to get real value from it very very quickly
02:13and when we talk about that this is really a once in a generation shift and not just noise so
02:20the
02:20next question is who actually gets to participate in it and there's a lot of talk about AI lowering
02:25the barrier to building software and in practical terms does that mean somewhere here in Malaysia
02:30without a traditional tech background can actually realistically build something more meaningful or is
02:37that still a bit of aspirational or is that still a bit of aspirational well let's take that in two
02:42parts if we could so the the first about lowering the barriers this really reminds me very strongly of
02:48my time in the the early days of personal computing when we go back to the the very very first
02:53spreadsheets
02:54and word processors and desktop publishers there was a time several decades ago when when writing
03:02letters and doing art and doing advanced kinds of calculations was all the province of specialists
03:08and if you were an executive you'd need to turn to a specialist in order to get any of those
03:12jobs done
03:14with the personal computer comes along and we've got spreadsheets we've got word processors we've got
03:19desktop publishing and now instead of having these specialists they were opening up these powers to a
03:26much broader set of people that are oftentimes much closer to the the business they're much closer to
03:33the application area and they likely have a better understanding of the business than than the the
03:39techno kind of folks so yes to hop to the second part of your question i strongly believe that this
03:46is
03:46an empower and an equalizing technology where we're no longer saying all the cool stuff gets built in one
03:53part of the world we're now saying that developers all over the world are on a a much stronger footing
03:58they're able to understand these technologies they're able to build things with them they're able to
04:04get them out to their local markets and something that i'm starting to pick up on is that the developers
04:10that are incredibly local to their audiences to their customers are the ones with the the best
04:16understanding of who those customers are what their business needs are and they're in the best position
04:23to actually communicate with their ai dev tools to say i deeply understand my customers because
04:30they're they speak my local language they're part of my local culture maybe they're in my neighborhood
04:35and i can express the the the businesses of those customers to my ai tool better than someone likely
04:41halfway around the world so yes i do believe that we're going to see locally in malaysia developers are
04:46going to emerge and build things for and sometimes what we could think of as a a hyper local market
04:53interesting perspective but um if that access is real then it raises a deeper question about what
04:59building software even means today so traditionally building software was a very specialized skill
05:04and what's actually changing now in how things are built compared to even uh five or ten years ago
05:10what's your thoughts on that so my sense is that over the course of the last 50 years of my
05:17career
05:18we have seen the skills requirement continually rise up to higher and higher levels of abstraction
05:25where we're we're further away from the machine but on the same time we're closer and closer to the
05:30customer so the ai skills the developers using ai they're just taking one more logical step in that
05:38same direction that the industry has been going on for a very very long time but the interesting thing is
05:44that
05:44the the the tools are not replacements for expertise these tools are absolutely amplifiers for the
05:51skills developers act already have a developer that is a a good developer is going to be able
05:56to use their ai tools to go from a good developer to a super ai powered developer and the developers
06:03that
06:03are earlier on the learning curve they're going to use the tools to help them further progress along that
06:08curve but what everything i've seen i talked to developers in 14 different countries last year
06:14as part of my worldwide trips i've taken developers are using these tools not to replace skills but to
06:21augment skills and to take the the skills they have and to make them even better and um basically what
06:27you're saying is that the way things are built is now changing which naturally changes uh who gets to
06:32build businesses and who and how big those businesses can become as well so you've said we could see a
06:39solo entrepreneur unicorns by 2030 so if we bring that closer to home um what would that person need
06:46to understand about their users or perhaps their market to actually get there jeff well i think i
06:53absolutely i'm highly confident that by 2030 we'll see the first of what we could think of as the the
06:58uni
06:58unicorns the unicorn billion dollar company built by that solar entrepreneur and what they're going
07:05to have these folks they're going to have an incredibly deep very enlightened understanding of their local
07:12business their local markets their local customers and they're going to have really good
07:17communication skills to take that deep understanding and to go to their ai powered dev tool let's say amazon
07:24kiro they're going to enter that in they're going to be able to say these are the requirements let's
07:30build some specs together let's go ahead and build an application suitable for this for this local market
07:38and that's actually pretty exciting but it also changes some long-held assumptions uh that people have
07:44about work and also careers so let's talk about jobs now because this is where the concern is if ai
07:50is
07:51writing more of the code what happens to developers especially younger ones just that's entering the
07:56workforce here so what we're finding is that as again the ai tools are amplifying the skills of the
08:04developers and what the developers need to to do is they early in their career they're going to need to
08:09start getting some real live hands-on experience with ai tools they're going to really need to hone not
08:15just their technical skills their abilities to look at customers look at businesses figure out unmet needs
08:22and to clearly communicate those to their ai tools so in addition to the tech skills that have always
08:27been the the prerequisite for succeeding in this field we also need to see a generation of developers
08:33that are incredibly good at observation and communication and stepping back from individual roles
08:41and that brings us to the bigger picture um in your opinion jeff how this shifts reshape entire markets
08:47and economies or ecosystem and when aws started 20 years ago it made technology more accessible
08:53and looking ahead do you see this next phase as making it possible for more people including in
08:59markets like malaysia for example and to actually build and skill businesses not just to use technology per se
09:07yes i i absolutely do and i i when i think back 20 years to the to march of 2006
09:14when we launched the
09:15first amazon web service we launched what's called s3 the simple storage service we launched that and we
09:21made it a lot easier for developers to store any amount of information in the cloud with with high
09:28durability and high reliability at a really low cost we followed that up with with compute services so
09:34developers the ability to both store and compute in the cloud when early developers both entrepreneurs
09:41and and enterprises started looking at those capabilities they said not only can we move existing
09:48applications to the cloud and make them run more efficiently than before but really inspired
09:52companies like netflix and lyft and capital one to start thinking in entirely new ways to build
09:58not just scaling up and globalizing existing businesses but really thinking with the power
10:04of the cloud the ability to do compute and data transfer on demand and to pay for only the resources
10:11used
10:12that made it economically viable for all these new businesses to exist that simply could not have
10:19existed in the the pre-cloud era and now let's talk at how complex and also fast ai is moving
10:26which is
10:26faster than previous tech shifts um also faster than regulation education system and also a company
10:32structures can adapt in your view um jeff what breaks first when technology accelerates this fast is the
10:39institutions or skills or trust
10:44oh i i think they're all moving along together and it's certainly a really exciting time to be in technology
10:50so i'm i've been honestly in tech and making my living as a developer and later as a tech evangelist
10:57for
10:57over 50 years at this point and i'm now late stage career but it seems like even faster and more
11:05exciting
11:05than ever before the the proliferation of new models new versions of models new developer tools new applications
11:14and then people with brand new sets of skills are jumping into this industry and saying
11:19the these skills that i have nurtured for a while that i didn't quite understand why i had them suddenly
11:25their their ability to look at businesses to look at use cases to look at unmet needs to express those
11:31they are now empowered to actually use ai tools to solve those problems so super exciting time to be in
11:38the
11:38tech industry um one more if i may add uh in markets like malaysia for example builders are often
11:45face constraints for example smaller budgets and then we have different consumer behaviors also
11:51fragmented markets do those constraints those three become a disadvantage in an ai era or could they
11:59actually produce stronger and more focused products jeff well i i do think that there's so many different
12:07ways that developers can jump into the cloud and to learn and to build that um that this should be
12:13an empowering technology this should not be be shutting anybody out i see and meanwhile for founders or
12:21policy makers that trying to decide what to bet on um what are the signals that tell you ai is
12:26creating
12:27something durable versus experiments that won't last beyond the hype cycle
12:33um well i i'm not an economist so it's hard to me to to talk at that level i i
12:39will tell you that
12:40from traveling around the world and talking to developers as part of my career the the traditional
12:45developers are certainly excited about and bought into ai and getting value from it now and we're seeing
12:51a lot of new folks that were maybe on the edge that were saying not quite sure where i belong
12:56in this
12:57industry but these ai tools are so exciting and there's so many opportunities for me to to learn
13:03and to participate that that new folks are joining in pretty rapidly all right amazing and jeff you've
13:10taken us from big technology titles to uh solo builders and to real concerns about jobs and what
13:15stands out is that this moment isn't just about smarter machines but about widening who gets to build
13:21create and also scale and the real opportunity seems less about replacing people and more about
13:26empowering many more of them so thank you so much for helping us make sense of this moment
13:31especially what it could mean for markets like malaysia and there was jeff barr the vice president and
13:36chief evangelist amazon web services aws thank you so much and you can find this whole discussion on
13:41all of our social media platforms and that includes astroone.com thank you so much
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