🤖 Amazon Shows Its AI Cards

Plus: Young Leaders Drive AI Adoption

December 05, 2024

Hello AI Enthusiast,

This week brings us interesting AI developments. Amazon has launched Nova, their new family of AI models at prices 75% below competitors, while Google's research shows an impressive amount of young leaders are already using AI tools in their daily work. Let's break down what's happening.

The Big Picture 🔊

Amazon Launches Nova Foundation Models

Amazon has launched Nova, a new family of AI models for text, image, and video processing cheaper than competitors on their Bedrock platform. The lineup includes various models from basic text-only to advanced multimodal options, with their most powerful version, Nova Premier, coming in early 2025. These models support customization and are already being used to enhance Amazon's advertising platform.

Gianluca Mauro
Gianluca MauroFounder and AI Rockstar

Amazon's Nova models are making people talk with pricing at just a third of OpenAI's rates.

While benchmarks (we always take them with a grain of salt) suggest they're not quite matching OpenAI's performance yet, Nova brings some neat features to the table from video understanding to letting smaller models learn specific tasks.

Gioele Mottarlini
Gioele MottarliniCOO and Image Addict

Amazon's playing an interesting game, launching Nova while investing $4B in Anthropic. Talk about not putting all your eggs in one basket! While Nova may not lead in performance, its budget-friendly pricing makes it perfect for Amazon's sellers who need AI for product listings and visuals.

Though we have to mention AWS's interface still feels like navigating a maze of model options. (image below)

AWS Bedrock's available AI providers

Young Leaders Drive AI Adoption

Google and Harris Poll surveyed over 1,000 U.S. knowledge workers aged 22-39 about AI usage, revealing that 82% already use AI tools at work, with 98% expecting AI to impact their workplace within 5 years. The survey found that young professionals are using AI to enhance communication, overcome task paralysis, and improve their management capabilities.

Gianluca Belloni
Gianluca BelloniCMO and Marketing Nomad

The data shows that higher AI usage leads to better productivity, with half of young professionals seeing automation as key to productivity.

But here's the important part: while younger generations are growing up with AI, it's mid-career professionals who need to focus on building these skills and blend their experience, if they act now.

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The Google research shows that higher AI usage correlates with increased productivity, yet many professionals are still figuring out how to fully leverage it in their work. For companies, we offer customized training programs that help teams implement AI effectively in their specific context. And if you're an individual looking to grow your AI skills, our newly launched Membership gives you access to all our on-demand and live programs throughout the year. Ready to learn more?

Bits and Bobs 🗞️

  • Amazon is working on reducing its reliance on Nvidia by developing its own AI training and inference chips in a lab in Austin, Texas.

  • Claude now offers customizable response styles, allowing users to tailor its communication to their specific preferences and needs.

  • World Labs has developed a technology that transforms 2D images into interactive 3D scenes, allowing users to explore them online with adjustable depth effects.

  • Runway has launched Frames, a new image generation model offering improved stylistic control and visual quality.

  • Adobe and the University of Michigan developed MultiFoley, an AI system that generates synchronized Foley sounds for videos using text, audio, or video prompts.

  • OpenAI has filed a trademark application for its gpt-o1 ‘reasoning’ AI model, though it is still awaiting review by the USPTO.

  • Canada’s major news organizations are suing OpenAI, claiming the company illegally used their articles to train ChatGPT without consent.

  • Over half of LinkedIn posts are now AI-generated, which has also led to a 107% increase in post length.

On the Podcast 🎧

Our new episode of "Behind the Scenes of EU Regulations and AI Policies" is out! Join us with David Fernández Llorca, who moved from 17 years in autonomous driving research to shaping EU's AI regulations, as he explains why self-driving cars are more complex than most people think.

From Our Channels 🤳

Following up on Google's insights about AI adoption, check out Gianluca's latest LinkedIn post that reveals an unexpected benefit. He explains how AI is improving work quality by helping developers tackle those tedious-but-important tasks they'd usually avoid.

That's a wrap on our newsletter! Here’s a quick recap before you go:

Catch you next week! 👋