CTO of Amazon, Werner Vogels: AI transforms software development from "achievable" to "safe and cost-effective."

Key summary

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, stated during a visit to Thailand that Generative AI enables the creation of prototypes within a single night, but transforming them into products presents challenges related to safety, cost, and stability. He provided an example: Large Language Models make it difficult to predict costs, as even slight changes in the input can increase the output cost by a factor of 10. Vogels emphasized that developers must always be responsible for what they create, whether it is written by AI or humans. Attackers can use AI agents to find vulnerabilities, so defensive teams must also use AI to help monitor systems. He referenced a blog post he wrote in June 2026, which described how Amazon Quick scientists created a prototype using Kiro, and the team immediately began experimenting with it.