Esplugas (AWS): "In the future, companies will have 500 employees and 1,500 AI agents."

BarcelonaArtificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way we work, and in the future, it may also change the environment in which we work. This was stated this Wednesday by Albert Esplugas, Global Head of Analyst Relations for Generative AI at Amazon Web Services (AWS), asserting that society will have to get used to the change that AI will represent for the labor market: "In the future, we will be there, and there will be a series of AI agents with whom we will collaborate," he said during the presentation of the AI ​​Congress in Barcelona, ​​​​held this Wednesday and Thursday at the AXA auditorium on Illa Diagonal.

Agentive AI is emerging as a new operating model with a high potential impact on companies that will represent a paradigm shift in the automation of tasks and processes, through the use of autonomous agents capable of making decisions, planning, executing complex tasks, and collaborating flexibly. According to Esplugas, however, "it is not about replacing, but about empowering."

In an interview in theCompanies In June 2024, Esplugas defined the paradigm shift that AI will bring: "Generative AI is a layer on top of that that allows you to talk to it. And what could be more natural for people than that, instead of using a mouse or a keyboard, we communicate by talking to a machine that is capable of understanding us." He also noted that "it is estimated that by 2029, 30% of companies' customers will not be people, but machines."

Business Processes

The executive has categorized this technology as "the biggest change humanity has ever experienced," which is revolutionizing the way companies work. Therefore, companies "must learn to integrate AI into their processes," since until now, the adoption of this technology has only had an average impact of reducing the workday by "20 minutes," causing workers to "extend their coffee break," but without a large-scale impact.

For this reason, he stated, "processes and roles must change" so that the integration of AI has a significant impact on productivity. Beyond the business impact, Esplugas reviewed the different ways of using generative AI, from the simplest, which consists of entering a command and having it respond with its own data, to the one that uses AI to generate massive amounts of content with which to simultaneously train the system itself.

Furthermore, according to the executive, AI will evolve towards "a hybrid model" that will mix classical, quantum, photonic, biological, and even "neuromorphic" systems, which are those that better imitate the brain's neural systems and will consume far fewer resources to function. Esplugas also spoke about the changes that will occur in the interfaces for communicating with generative AI, since beyond talking to it through a chat, users will increasingly become accustomed to doing so with their voice, through a mobile phone microphone, for example. He even predicted that users will be able to communicate with AI through their minds, something that a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), called Alterego, which studies connecting thoughts with AI.

Data centers in Spain

For his part, Nvidia's vice president for Supercomputing, Rod Evans, also stated at the conference this Wednesday that Spain is at the "forefront" and is "one of the hot spots in Europe for installing new data centers," thanks to its energy capacity, land area, and local entrepreneurship.

In his speech, Evans highlighted Spain's role on the European scene; he acknowledged that a few years ago it seemed that data centers would be located in Nordic countries because they needed cold air, but new technologies mean that the essential ingredients for these infrastructures are "water and energy." "And, certainly, Spain has a lot of energy capacity" and "great sustainable off-grid energy," he added.