Blog

09/05/2024

Trending in AI prompts: What are jobs AI can’t do? 

By Jane Dornemann

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Image by Suzanne Calkins

Gossip (for nerds) 

  • Reports of slowing Azure growth following Microsoft’s quarterly earnings report, plus “light sales guidance,” led the stock to dip 5%. Even though earnings grew 10% YoY and cloud sales grew 30% that growth is smaller compared to the previous quarter’s growth. In particular, Intelligent Cloud “missed expectations.” Capital expenditure in early AI is also detracting from profitability. 
    • In response, Microsoft is going to change how it reports numbers for its business segments, kind of like when I tell my husband I put money into savings this month but leave out the part where I bought a $50 concealer (IT GOT RAVE REVIEWS AND I NEED IT, OK?). 
  • Regardless of how Microsoft structures its earnings, it should be fine as long as I keep overconsuming TikTok. As of March, the platform spent $20M per month on Azure OpenAI Service through Microsoft—a whopping 25% of the revenue Microsoft was generating through that business. Is an OpenAI rep on their way to Washington, DC to beg Congress not to ban TikTok as I type this? 
  • Amazon earnings were bright, with AWS as the driving force behind a quarterly profit of $13.5B—a 19% increase YoY and above expectations. But all this demand isn’t necessarily a great thing, because AWS has “a titanic backlog” for its services. It’s unclear if that’s why AWS closed some of its services to new customers, such as Amazon S3 Select, or whether they plan on retiring those services down the road.  
  • Meanwhile, The demand for AI is more than Microsoft can accommodate, so the cloud giant is spending billions to use third-party centers while it builds out more of its own.
  • Like Microsoft, AWS is spending a significant amount on capital ($16.4B for Q2!), which includes building new data centers instead of refurbishing old ones. Next up: Hyderabad, India. 
    • Investments also include the race to create AI chips that are cheaper and faster than NVIDIA’s.
  • In a leaked internal fireside chat, the AWS CEO told the company’s software developers that they need to find other skills because AI is going to start coding for them. “Upskill and learn new technologies” was the depth of the direction they received. Are you feeling left out? Don’t—the CEO said most white-collar jobs will look completely different in five to 10 years. Time to upskill and learn new technologies!!!!
  • Microsoft wasn’t the only cloud provider to experience at outage at the end of July—AWS had connectivity issues for a day, preventing customers from accessing storage, databases, and other services. The guest contributor who wrote this article asked if this dependency on two clouds calls for a plan B, and lucky for him, he’s a man and doesn’t have to think about equitable access. OH YOU MEAN THE OTHER PLAN B…right right, yes, let’s get on that. 
  • Where was Microsoft’s “the customer is not always right” mentality when I was a waitress? Delta’s CEO, Microsoft, and CrowdStrike exchanged some WORDS over July’s outage. Microsoft and CrowdtSrike are blaming Delta for its slow recovery, saying the airline refused Microsoft’s help. Delta is like “We don’t need your help, also, we hate you and this is your fault.” 
  • Last year, Nokia and AWS decided to collaborate. Well, they collaborated a little too hard because now AWS is suing Nokia for stealing patented intellectual property. I almost never say this, but this article about the conflict is great from start to finish, and involves rowing teams beating each other with oars, a “criminal pivot” for a business strategy, and German indifference. Thanks Iain Morris.  

World domination 

  • The US government is doing its darndest to keep advanced chips and other AI capabilities out of the hands of China, but as Jeff Goldblum’s character states in Jurassic Park, nature finds a way—and that way is AWS. They are exploiting a loophole in which Chinese companies can access technology like NVIDIA A100 chips through cloud providers who are fully allowed to operate in the country (or, through intermediary companies). But this velociraptor has figured out how to have babies y’all. 
  • Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service achieved FedRAMP certification, which means some federal agencies now have permission to use it for sensitive datasets. The IRS started with the prompt, “Show me everyone who is not paying their taxes,” which yielded a list of extremely wealthy individuals. So, they adjusted the prompt to say “Compile a list of poor souls who make under $30k a year and were late filing by two days so we can rain hellfire upon them without fear of them being able to afford an accountant.” 
    • That FedRAMP certification came just in time for Microsoft and Palantir to sell cloud-enabled AI and data analytics to US defense and intelligence agencies. 
  • AWS is talking to UK regulators like they lied about doing their homework. The cloud provider is “disappointed in [the investigation]” of the AWS-Anthropic relationship, claiming it is in no way anti-competitive, along with calls to “end the probe” like it’s being abducted by a UFO or something. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

  • A hacker group is exploiting vulnerabilities in Azure subdomains to spread disinformation on Android phones via push alerts that lead users to fake news sites. My favorite part about this story is that the fake news was about—wait for it—Harry Connick Jr. Don’t they want people to actually click on the links? No offense to HCJ, but WGAF? 
  • Just two weeks after the famed CrowdStrike update outage, Microsoft experienced another global outage due to a cyberattack that affected Outlook, Azure, and Minecraft. Office workers and middle school nerds everywhere were distraught. The 10-hour downtime was the result of a DDoS attack and Microsoft’s “failure to properly defend against it.” Does everybody remember the recent Microsoft announcement that executive bonuses would be tied to security performance? Looks like you’re not getting that boat this year, David. 
  • At its annual conference in Vegas, Black Hat discovered six critical vulnerabilities (they didn’t get the memo that that should have stayed in Vegas). Is AWS trying to be like Microsoft with all these security headlines? AWS, just be yourself. You don’t need to Single White Female your competitor, it’s OK, we like you for YOU. 
  • Is there anything more ironic (or, iconic) than an infected health bot? Privilege escalation flaws in Azure’s cloud-based AI Health Bot Service allowed unauthorized access to customers’ resources via a malicious attack. When users asked what they should do about a health problem, such as a rash, the health bot responded “Put a bird on it” 100% of the time (that was for my fellow Portlandia lovers only). A research engineer at cybersecurity firm Tenable says this is what happens when AI development is rushed. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

  • AWS is going to power GE HealthCare’s generative AI models via Amazon Bedrock, with the aim of improving patient care. Honestly, the bar for good healthcare is so low in this country that you could put an extra garbage can in the exam room and I’d call that improving patient care. 
  • I guess Leeds Teaching Hospital in England wants to put a bird on everything now that it has moved entirely to Azure.
  • Telecoms company Lumen Technologies is using Azure to drive AI adoption and innovation. In return, Microsoft will use Lumen’s Private Connectivity Fabric to strengthen connectivity capabilities among Microsoft data centers. 
  • More than half of Y Combinator startups are accepting Microsoft’s cloud credits initiative, which aims to get promising young companies to build on Azure. 

New stuff  

  • As AWS wins new clients in the public sector, it has decided to expand its cohort of government tech suppliers. The AWS Champions Program highlights vendors and public agencies who use AWS for civic advancement.  
  • Microsoft Teams has a new app that unifies your personal and work accounts. Sounds…like…a great…idea… 
  • Mithra, which sounds like some angry Greek goddess, is the newest platform from AWS. The CIO went on to explain what it does “in simplest terms” but it was not, in fact, the simplest terms, so figure it out for yourself. 
  • Oracle has an official partnership with Microsoft but doesn’t yet offer its MySQL Heatwave for Azure. However, Oracle just announced it has made the database service available on AWS despite no official partnership with the cloud provider. MySQL Heatwave itself runs on AWS. 

Professional Pivots 

Best Friends Forever 

New to Azure Marketplace: 

  • Ivanti, which sounds like a cheap clothing brand that’s trying to pass for Italian high fashion, will help Microsoft customers break down barriers between IT and security. 
  • iiDENTIFii, a company that apparently never wants to be Googled properly, is bringing its biometric identity authentication to Azure Marketplace. 
  • Lumifi has added its managed detection and response services 
  • Pathlock Cloud, which offers identity governance solutions, is on Azure Marketplace 
  • Mobile device management company Jamf became a Microsoft Partner and will enter Azure Marketplace later this year.’

New to AWS Marketplace: