Some industry watchers say AWS CEO Andy Jassy is overspending on building ML models and services, but for him giving the technology so much time, energy and money is meant to open the doors of companies and developers to the gigantic possibilities ahead once they figure out what exactly is to be done with ML.

Jassy knows what Machine Learning can do when it comes to big and small enterprises and, most importantly, to the differently-abled via enhanced computer vision, brain signal processing, speech recognition systems, voice-based features and other related tools.

However, not many businesses and developers know yet how to fully utilise ML models.

“The problem with ML today is that most companies do not know what they want to do with it. Also, it is equally difficult to find people who know how to build right and ethical ML models and train, tune and deploy those.

“That is why you see us spending so much time, energy and investment in the ML and AL space,” Jassy told the gathering at the company’s annual flagship “ReInvent 2018” conference here.

In the last one year, AWS has released nearly 200 ML services and features.

“We know there is real thrust and hunger from builders to be able to do it more easily, and this is what we want to enable them to do,” said Jassy.

According to him, ML can solve plethora of everyday problems but the real task is to safeguard the algorithms and models from bad actors who have the tendency to harm the world.

“Even though we have not heard any abuse in our ML models and services so far, we are aware that people will be able to do bad things with these services, the way they do with any technology that can harm the world,” Jassy told a packed house.

One solution, he added, is that ML models and algorithms have to be benchmarked by the industry so that they remain as accurate as possible.

“You have to be clear how you recommend people using those services,” said the AWS CEO as the company announced 13 new ML services and capabilities, including a custom AI chip.

One such ML service is SageMaker that has been given a fresh makeover, to make it easier for customers to build, train and deploy models.

SageMaker “Ground Truth” capability produces high-quality labelled training data; SageMaker RL delivers Cloud’s first managed service for reinforcement learning algorithms and simulators; and a new ML Marketplace offers more than 150 new models and algorithms to developers via SageMaker.

“Over 10,000 customers are currently using Amazon SageMaker. Developers can now sell their ML models and algorithms on AWS Marketplace. It is a great place for developers and customers,” informed Jassy.

Other AI services include Amazon “Textract” that extracts text and data from virtually any scanned document; Amazon “Personalize” and Amazon “Forecast” bring the same technology used by Amazon to developer, with no Machine Learning experience required; and Amazon “Comprehend Medical” tool provides Natural Language Processing (NLP) for medical information.

GE Healthcare is training computer vision models with Amazon SageMaker that are then deployed in its MRI and X-Ray devices.

“By applying reinforcement learning techniques, we are able to reduce the size of our trained models while achieving the right balance between network compression and model accuracy,” said Keith Bigelow, Senior Vice President of Edison Portfolio Strategy, GE Healthcare.

Amazon Comprehend Medical is an NLP service for medical text which uses Machine Learning to extract disease conditions, medications and treatment outcomes from patient notes, clinical trial reports and other electronic health records.

Comprehend Medical requires no Machine Learning expertise, no complicated rules to write, no models to train, and it is continuously improving.

Jassy is confident that irrespective of the challenges ahead, AWS will help democratise ML for all.

“We are not overspending on ML. It is a gigantic area and we are investing right. If you look at the advent of ML and its potential to solve problems, it is huge,” said Jassy.

Jassy on Wednesday announced Managed Blockchain service and a Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) to help companies manage business transactions that require full auditability.

Managed Blockchain supports two popular open source Blockchain frameworks — Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric.

“This service is going to make it much easier for the customers to use the two most popular Blockchain frameworks,” Jassy told a packed house during his keynote address at the “ReInvent 2018” conference here.

“AWS today has millions of active customers. There has been a dramatic Cloud growth in the enterprise sector. Every imaginable enterprise vertical on Earth is using AWS,” Jassy added.

Amazon QLDB is a transparent and cryptographically verifiable ledger for applications that need a central, trusted authority to provide a permanent and complete record of transactions — like supply chain, financial, manufacturing, insurance, and human resources.

As Jassy announced new capabilities in AWS, one presentation slide showed Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, who has been criticising AWS for quite some time and at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld, Ellison spent much of his keynote taking on AWS.

“Oracle and SQL databases are expensive and not customer-friendly. These are old guard databases. Time has changed and so are the customers. Our Aurora database has the unmatched pace of innovation. This is the moment for database freedom,” said Jassy, taking a dig on Oracle.

In an earlier interview to CNBC, Jassy said Amazon will be completely off Oracle databases by the end of 2019.

AWS then showcased AWS “Inferentia” AI chip for larger workloads that consume entire GPUs or require lower latency. The high-performance machine learning (ML) inference chip is custom designed by AWS.

The company announced 13 new ML capabilities and services, across all layers in the machine learning stack, to help put machine learning in the hands of even more developers.

“We are not overspending on ML research. It is a gigantic area and we are investing in the right direction,” said Jassy.

In a bid to capture the Hybrid Cloud market, the company along with VMware announced “AWS Outposts” — compute and storage racks that allow customers to run compute and storage on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to the rest of AWS’s broad array of services in the Cloud.

“Customers are telling us that they don’t want a hybrid experience that attempts to recreate a stunted version of a cloud on-premises, because it’s perpetually out of sync with the cloud version. There just isn’t a lot of value in that type of on-premises offering and that’s why these solutions aren’t getting much traction,” said Jassy.

In 2017, AWS collaborated with VMware to introduce VMware Cloud on AWS.

“Our new offerings, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, further extend our vision for consistent infrastructure and consistent operations from the data center to the cloud to the edge,” added Pat Gelsinger, Chief Executive Officer, VMware.

AWS also introduced new “Amazon SageMaker” features, making it easier for developers to build, train, and deploy machine learning models – including low cost, automatic data labeling and reinforcement learning (RL).

The company announced new AI services that can extract text from virtually any document, read medical information, and provide customized personalization, recommendations and forecasts using the same technology used by Amazon.com.

AWS said it will help developers get rolling with machine learning with AWS DeepRacer, a new autonomous model race car for developers, driven by reinforcement learning.

The car (with all-wheel drive, monster truck tires, an HD video camera, and on-board compute) is driven using reinforcement learning models trained using Amazon SageMaker.

Developers can put their skills to the test and race their cars and models against other developers for prizes and glory in the DeepRacer League, the world’s first global autonomous racing league, open to everyone.

The company has launched more than 200 significant ML capabilities in the past 12 months.

According to Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector at AWS, in just about two years’, there has been a significant change in Cloud adoption in the public sector in India.

“When I first visited India in 2016, people, although tech-savvy, were not much exposed to Cloud computing and capabilities it brings in. Startups were always enthusiastic but within the government circles, the buzz around Cloud was just shaping up,” Carlson told during a free-wheeling interview here.

“On my second India visit, I am glad to see the transformation. They are now clearly aware of Cloud computing and immense benefits associated with it,” she emphasized.

“India I am kind of excited about as state government is moving really faster on adopting Cloud than the US state governments when they were exposed to the Cloud computing eight years back,” added Carlson who reports directly to AWS CEO Andy Jassy.

Realising the immense potential of moving operations to scalable, agile and secure AWS Cloud from physical data centers, the state governments in the country are now getting rid of the aging IT infrastructure.

“We started Cloud in 2010 in the US and we now see them moving fast. India is already on the move within just two years,” said Carlson who was among “D.C.’s Top 50 Women In Tech List 2016” by leading US tech company FedScoop.

Since launching AWS’ public sector business in 2010, Carlson has seen the client list growing from state, local and central governments to educational institutions, ed-tech companies, and non-profit organizations.

To help improve citizen services in India is something she is bullish on.

“Citizens today have a greater voice via various online platforms. They can now reach policymakers and elected representatives to register their grievances. This is an area where India has great potential to empower its billion-plus citizens,” Carlson told.

Maharashtra, for example, is leveraging AWS Cloud to improve its citizen services.

“MahaOnline is using AWS capabilities. The data-sets are huge and they can scale up or down their requirements as per the coming traffic as our system is automatically scalable. Millions of citizens are going to be empowered via this initiative,” Peter Moore, Regional Managing Director, Public Sector-Asia Pacific at AWS, told.

MahaOnline is facilitating the digitization of information technology in various state departments. With MahaOnline portal, thousands of citizens are daily reaping the benefit of online services.

AWS is the first Global Cloud Provider (GCP) in the country to achieve full empanelment by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for delivering Cloud services to government customers.

The company launched AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region with two availability zones in 2016 and has seen stupendous growth in adding new customers in the region.

During her second India visit, Carlson met several top government officials in New Delhi, including from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and the citizen engagement platform MyGov, exploring ways how to help in skilling and empowering Indian citizens.

According to her, India is on the right trajectory as the state governments now have quick access to buying Cloud capabilities.

“They are also aware of the lack of right skill-sets which is the concern among governments around the world who are struggling to find skilled workforce for Cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML),” Carlson noted, adding that AWS is already performing a big role in skilling young talent globally, including in India.