Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian and Dr. Werner Vogels share the stage at the 2024 VivaTech conference in Paris.

In 2005, Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian was an intern at Amazon, curious about the company and excited to work with his friend and mentor, Dr. Werner Vogels. Nineteen years later, the two shared a stage in Paris to reflect on Amazon’s history of innovation—from pioneering the pay-as-you-go model with AWS to transforming customer experiences using “good old-fashioned AI”—as well as what really keeps them up at night in the age of generative AI. Here are four core takeaways from nearly two decades driving customer-obsessed innovation at Amazon.

When Werner recruited Swami to join Amazon as an intern, the pitch was simple: “We’re about to do something really, really big.” Werner immediately challenged Swami to work on a pivotal internal project: developing Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon’s first database product. Its success, Werner contended, “set off the whole revolution of dedicated databases” and, informed the origin for the economic model of AWS: “If you want to be the Earth’s most customer-centric technology provider, you have to put the customer in charge—only pay for what you’ve used.”

In Swami’s view, advances in generative AI will empower developers to spend more time on “critical-level thinking” to solve customer problems. Werner echoed that sentiment, comparing the current moment in generative AI to the first steps of a marathon, emphasizing that the automation of busywork such as recoding will prove “absolutely crucial” for developers and engineers, enabling them to better serve customers and eliminate time-consuming work that doesn’t contribute to the business or products they're building.

From fighting fraud to forecasting demand, AI’s predictive capacities have long contributed to improving customer experiences. “There is all this work that has been going on for years already,” Werner said. “We just continue to build on that with newer AI technologies.” As just one example, Swami cited Rufus, the expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalog, likening its ability to answer customer questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons to “a friend who is an expert.”

Asked if competitors ever kept him up at night, Werner insisted that listening to customer needs—such as guardrails, security, and privacy—and building products based on those needs is what drives success at Amazon. Swami said he viewed Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock as prime examples of successful products that have emerged as a result of this customer-first approach. “If you end up chasing your competitors, you are going to end up building what they are building,” he added. “If you actually listen to your customers, you are actually going to lead the way in innovation.”

For more insights on how AI can help tackle the most difficult problems of today and tomorrow, catch Werner’s interview from VivaTech in Paris on CNN.

If you're passionate about cutting-edge technology and want to make a real impact, we'd love to hear from you. Check out our open roles in generative AI and apply today.