AWS tech forecast for 2024 and beyond

IN its latest press briefing, AWS is predicting that the coming years will be filled with innovation in areas designed to democratize access to technology, and it starts with further exploiting the huge potentials of generative AI (GenAI).

GenAI becomes culturally aware

Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on culturally diverse data will gain a more nuanced understanding of human experience and complex societal challenges. This cultural fluency promises to make generative AI more accessible to users worldwide.

Two areas of research will play a pivotal role in achieving the type of cultural fluency that comes instinctively to humans. One is reinforcement learning from AI feedback (RLAIF), in which a model incorporates feedback from another model. In this scenario, different models can interact with each other and update their own understandings of different cultural concepts based on these interactions.

Second is collaboration through multi-agent debate, in which multiple instances of a model generate responses, debate the validity of each response and the reasoning behind it, and finally come to an agreed-upon answer through this debate process. Both areas of research reduce the human cost it takes to train and finetune models.

FemTech finally takes off

The foundation of modern medicine has been male by default. Common needs like menstrual care and menopause treatment have historically been treated as taboo, and because women have been excluded from trials and research, their outcomes have typically been worse than men.

On average, women are diagnosed later than men for many diseases, and women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack. The most glaring example of the inequities may be prescription medicine, where women report adverse side effects at significantly higher rates than men.

Though these statistics seem concerning on the surface, investment in women’s health care (aka FemTech) is on the rise, aided by cloud technologies and greater access to data.

AWS has been working closely with women-led startups and has seen firsthand the growth in FemTech. In the last year alone, funding has increased 197 percent. With increased access to capital, technologies like machine learning, and connected devices designed specifically for women.

AWS is at the cusp of an unprecedented shift, not only in the way women’s care is perceived but also in how it’s administered. As stigma fades around women’s health needs and more funding flows into the sector, FemTech companies will continue to aggressively tackle previously overlooked conditions and needs.

At the same time, women’s access to health services will dramatically increase, thanks to hybrid care models that take advantage of online medical platforms, the availability of low-cost diagnostic devices, and on-demand access to medical professionals.

As these platforms mature and proliferate, access to care will be democratized. Women in rural areas and historically underserved regions will have an easier time connecting to OB/GYNs, mental health professionals, and other specialists through apps and telehealth platforms.

Redefining developer productivity

The AI assistants on the horizon will not only understand and write code; they will also be tireless collaborators and teachers. With a contextual understanding of entire systems, not just isolated modules, AI assistants will provide recommendations that augment human creativity, such as translating a napkin sketch into scaffolding code, generating templates from a requirements doc, or recommending the best infrastructure for your task (e.g., serverless vs. containers).

These assistants will be highly customizable — personalized at the individual, team, or company level. They will be able to explain the internals of complex distributed systems, like Amazon S3, in simple terms, making them invaluable educational tools. Junior developers will leverage them to quickly get up to speed on unfamiliar infrastructure.

Senior engineers will use them to swiftly comprehend new projects or codebases and begin making meaningful contributions. Whereas before it may have taken weeks to fully grasp the downstream impacts of a code change, assistants can instantly assess modifications, summarize their effects on other parts of the system, and suggest additional changes as needed. These assistants will also be able to re-architect and migrate entire legacy applications, even understand how resources individually impact efficiency and develop pricing models.

In the coming years, engineering teams will become more productive, develop higher-quality systems, and shorten software release life cycles as AI assistants move from novelty to necessity across the entire software industry.

Speed of tech innovation

Companies are bringing products to market faster than ever, and customers are adopting new technologies at previously unimaginable speeds. In this rapidly spinning flywheel of technology and business, one area that has not been included until now is higher education.

Education is radically different across the world, but it’s been widely accepted that to hire the best people — and to land the best job yourself — a college degree is table stakes. This has been especially true in technology.

However, this model appears to be breaking down. For students, costs are rising and many are questioning the value of a traditional college degree when practical training is available. For companies, fresh hires still require on-the-job training (OJT). As more and more industries call for specialization from their employees, the gap is widening between what’s taught in school and what employers need.

Glimpses of this shift have been underway for years. Companies like Coursera, which originally focused on consumers, have partnered with enterprises to scale their upskilling and reskilling efforts. Degree apprenticeships have continued to grow in popularity because education can be specialized by the employer, and apprentices can earn as they learn.

But now, companies themselves are starting to seriously invest in skillsbased education at scale. In fact, Amazon just announced that it has already trained 21 million tech learners across the world in tech skills. And thanks in part to programs like the Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship and AWS Cloud Institute.

All of these programs enable learners at different points in their career journey to gain the exact skills they need to enter in-demand roles, without the commitment of a traditional multi-year program.