Amazon's AI 'high blast radius'
Rafe Rosner-Uddin for the Financial Times:
Amazonâs ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a âdeep diveâ into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.
The online retail giant said there had been a âtrend of incidentsâ in recent months, characterised by a âhigh blast radiusâ and âGen-AI assisted changesâ among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.
Under âcontributing factorsâ the note included ânovel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully establishedâ.
Oh dear! From now on, the company said, all code changes from junior and mid-level engineers that involved AI generation must be signed off by a superior. Which you'd think would have been the case anyway.
Curiously, after the FT's report, according to CNBC, the reference to AI was removed from the memo:
Earlier on Tuesday, an internal document indicated that âGenAI-assisted changesâ involving âGenAI toolsâ were a factor in a âtrend of incidentsâ since the third quarter. However, the bullet point referencing GenAI was deleted before the meeting, according to an updated version of the document viewed by CNBC and a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because of confidentiality.
After initial publication of this story, an Amazon spokesperson said a single incident was related to AI and none of the incidents involved AI-written code.
Deleted from the memo, but not deleted from the discussion itself, I'd wager.