One of the themes to emerge at Google Cloud Next in San Francisco this week has been the importance of building an ecosystem to support the growing demands of generative AI.

Google Cloud has been focused on creating partnerships that will advance its AI initiatives, as seen in its recent collaboration with Nvidia Corp. An open architecture will be especially important in this area, according to one Google LLC executive.

“This is one of the most important areas when we think about the future of AI,” said Carrie Tharp (pictured), vice president of strategic industries for Google Cloud. “That’s been a big focus of ours, to make sure we have this open architecture, bringing in that ecosystem. Not everybody is going to build out a big data and analytics and prompt engineering team and really explode that out. They need to be working with the ecosystem to be able to deliver business value. This is the top conversation we’re hearing at board levels.”

Tharp spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Rob Strechay at the Google Cloud Next event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed customer interest in AI and the technology’s potential for disruption. (* Disclosure below.)

Prioritizing use cases

Google is hearing a great deal from customers about the importance of leveraging generative AI. Translating that interest into business use cases remains a key area of focus, according to Tharp.

“We surveyed our top customers – 89% top priority to implement generative AI,” Tharp said. “But the prerequisite to that is 65% understand they have to start with the business case and stack rank those priority use cases. It’s a platform; you have to think about not a single use case, not a single data source, and how you architect that to create a platform for growth.”

As the AI use cases develop, one certainty is that disruption of previous business models will be inevitable, perhaps including the internet itself.

“What’s happening in generative, it allows us to break the structure, frankly, of the internet,” Tharp said. “In some of these industries like retail, travel … you’ve gotten used to the box that you’re in, and this will break that box. This disrupts industries and creates new business models. That’s why I say it’s the most exciting time since the beginning of the internet.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Google Cloud Next event:

(* Disclosure: Google LLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE