Artificial intelligence has evolved into a spectacle of transformative trends and groundbreaking announcements. This year, the spotlight shines on generative AI, pushing the boundaries of applications, user experiences and the very fabric of infrastructure.

At the heart of AI’s maturity lies the realization that data is not just big; it’s gargantuan. Several trends highlight the ever-growing volumes of data and the imperative to make it not only accessible but understandable.

“If you look at the trends, as you know, that’s what I did at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, what are the future trends?” asked Tom Soderstrom (pictured), enterprise strategist at Amazon Web Services Inc. “It is much bigger data and making it easier to access, but not yet easy to understand. This year continues that — much bigger data. And you saw a lot of announcements of the big data warehouse Redshift and how it makes it faster.”

Soderstrom spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed generative AI and how it’s pushing the boundaries of applications, user experiences and the very fabric of infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.)

Data: The bedrock of transformation

There’s been a monumental shift in focus toward generative AI, a force reshaping the entire technological landscape. However, the gen AI benefits being enjoyed across industries today come at the cost of exploding data repositories.

Responding to the imperative need to make those large data resources accessible and understandable, AWS’ Redshift is capable of handling large volumes of data, including structured and unstructured data in the exabyte range. It can also be used for large-scale data migrations. There’s also the expansion of Amazon Aurora’s database capabilities, with the spotlight on serverless computing, promising faster and easier data access.

“I love the idea of an unlimited Aurora — unlimited, that’s a big word,” Soderstrom said. “You have a lot of data. Now, it makes it easier to access. You saw a lot of serverless, which, of course, means you don’t have to worry about the details of the cloud — it’s faster and easier to access. ”

Understanding the data is where AWS pulled out all the stops. Recently announced, Q is an intelligent digital assistant that acts as a guiding force through the data deluge. Q has been positioned to guide everything from code design to deployment, heralding a new era where AI recommends, but professionals decide, Soderstrom explained.

“In 2017, we built an intelligent digital assistant at JPL,” he said. “We used Alexa to tie into thousands of contracts, and it was stored in Oracle Databases. But we had to build all that heavy lifting inside ourselves. Now with Bedrock, you don’t have to. I think the big trend is that you are getting Q to be this intelligent virtual assistant for everything. It’s at the code, how to design it, how to code it, build test cases and deploy it.”

Democratizing innovation has been a clear event theme. The focus isn’t on wild predictions, but on providing a steady hand of innovation for both enterprises and startups. It’s important that developers reuse existing innovations while adding their own, with natural language emerging as the next programming language, according to Soderstrom.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event:

(* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE