Elliott Young, CTO of Dell Technologies EMEA, shared valuable insights on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and multicloud strategies. Young emphasized the importance of businesses adopting a multicloud approach for deploying generative AI models, highlighting key considerations and challenges.
Dell's Role in the Multicloud Landscape: Elliott Young, serving as the Chief Technology Officer for the core division in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, plays a pivotal role in optimizing IT for board-level customers. His focus is on enhancing existing IT infrastructure and developing strategies to adapt to evolving technologies.
Understanding Multicloud in the Context of AI: Multicloud, according to Young, involves assessing on-premises operations and determining how to leverage multicloud or partner clouds. This 'ground to cloud' approach allows hosting AI-optimized workloads seamlessly across on-premises solutions, Azure, or AWS, with a unified control plane. Young states, "...host an AI-optimized workload on the solution, like PowerFlex... and have seamless access to data."
Use Cases for AI in Multicloud Environments: Differentiating between machine learning and generative AI, Young identifies use cases based on training and inferencing. For machine learning, the focus is on data gravity, while generative AI necessitates conscious decisions on GPU or CPU cycles. Security considerations vary, with generative AI raising concerns about privilege escalation and role-based access control.
Challenges and Considerations for Clients: Clients often face challenges when adapting their infrastructure to accommodate generative AI. Young emphasizes the need to balance data refinement efforts with the potential for immediate value from new AI solutions. Companies are exploring data lakehouses, allowing immediate query access for large language models.
Addressing Bias, Transparency, and Responsibility in AI: Regarding bias and transparency, Young acknowledges the trade-offs when using public services like ChatGPT. For greater control, deploying cloud language models as endpoints allows interception of responses for actions such as bias detection. Regulatory concerns are crucial, with recent European Parliament regulations addressing the ethical use of AI in areas like emotion recognition.
Looking Ahead: Exciting Prospects in AI and Multicloud: Young expresses excitement about the collaborative potential of multiple AIs working together. He envisions scenarios where AI systems seamlessly integrate with databases and external sources, offering users dynamic, real-time information. This collaborative approach across multicloud solutions is anticipated to shape the future of AI applications.
Dell's Approach to AI and Multicloud: Dell emphasizes choice, providing various avenues to achieve similar outcomes. Collaborations with industry leaders like Nvidia, Intel, and AMD ensure customers have access to the right infrastructure for their specific AI solutions. Dell's commitment lies in offering flexible options tailored to the evolving landscape of AI and multicloud integration.
