AWS has announced a new skills alliance that will look to arm 100,000 people in the UK with AI skills by 2030.
The company unveiled its Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance at the AWS Summit London yesterday. The scheme will be delivered in partnership with industry leaders, including Accenture and Deloitte, as well as higher education institutions and governmental organisations.
The alliance aims to develop technical skills for jobs in AI, cybersecurity and big data by 2030, and follows a $10 billion investment pledge for UK-based data centres announced last year.
Speaking in front of more than 20,000 attendees, AWS vice president U.K. and Ireland, Alison Kay, revealed that at least one U.K. business is now adopting AI every minute.
The figure is part of a new report released by AWS that also found over half (52%) of UK businesses are now using AI, up from 39% last year. 92% of these businesses say they have reported increased revenue, while a lack of digital skills has slowed almost half (46%) of UK firms.
The investment comes as sectors from life sciences to agriculture report transformative benefits from AI integration, with research timelines cut by 50% and experimental costs reduced by $27,000 per instance.
“As we witness one of the biggest revolutions in technology, we need to ensure our digital infrastructure and workforce are ready to meet it,” Kay said.
“And who knows, we might just give the next Charles Babbage, the next Ada Lovelace, and the next Alun Turing – the biggest opportunity to thrive in today’s digital world.”
Revolutionise cloud computing
AWS vice president of computer and networking, David Brown, also took the stage during the keynote, and he said AWS aims to revolutionise cloud computing through massive infrastructure expansion, led by the world’s largest private network spanning 3.7 million miles of fibre optic cable.
Brown said AWS‘s Graviton4 processors now deliver 45% faster performance for Java applications. Its Trainium2 chips have also set new benchmarks in AI processing with quadruple the speed and triple the energy efficiency of previous versions.
This advancement has attracted major AI players like Anthropic, whose Project Raynia will utilise hundreds of thousands of Trainium2 chips.
“To me, one of the best parts about being a builder is that you get to imagine things that seem impossible and then you get to build them and make them real,” said Brown. “At AWS, we give you the building blocks so that you can build anything that you can imagine.”
The company also discussed its cloud storage capability, revealing that Amazon Simple Storage Service S3 now hosts 400 trillion objects and features enhanced metadata management.
