With less than a week to re:Invent 2020, we are feeling the excitement and thrill, and looking forward to seeing you all at the world's premier cloud learning event. As always, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to be on the list of top topics with our customers and partners. We're making it bigger and better this year with the first ever machine learning keynote, over 50 technical breakout sessions, live racing with the AWS DeepRacer League, and more. You'll hear from AWS experts as well as many of our customers including NASCAR, Intuit, McDonalds, Mobileye, NFL, Siemens Energy, and many others, across industries such as sports, finance, retail, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing, and more. To help you plan your agenda for the extravaganza, here are a few highlights from the artificial intelligence and machine learning track at re:Invent 2020.

The growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning will create millions of new jobs over the next few years. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) specialists are in the most "in demand" employees across all industries, according to the World Economic Forum's new Future of Jobs report, 2020, yet there are only a few hundred thousand engineers trained in AI and ML worldwide. As more organizations embrace digital transformation by moving to the cloud to make machine learning a reality, they're using creative training initiatives to close the machine learning skills gap. Capital One's AWS DeepRacer League is one excellent example of this. As an organization, Capital One has been on a multi-year journey to transform into a technology company that also happens to be a bank, instead of a bank that uses technology.

This is a guest post by Ray Goh, a tech executive at DBS Bank. AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car powered by reinforcement learning, and the AWS DeepRacer League is the world's first global autonomous racing league. It's a fun and easy way to get started with machine learning (ML), regardless of skill or background. For companies, it's also a powerful platform to facilitate teaching ML to employees at the enterprise level. We've partnered with AWS to bring the AWS DeepRacer League to DBS to train over 3,000 employees in AI and ML by the end of 2020.

DBS has set its sights on accelerating the use of AI and Machine Learning across its business. To enable this, DBS and AWS have jointly launched the DBS x AWS DeepRacer League. DBS employees will learn the basics of AI and Machine Learning by participating in a series of hands-on online tutorials before putting their new knowledge to the test by programming their own autonomous model race car. These Machine Learning models are then uploaded onto a virtual racing environment where employees can experiment and iteratively finetune their models as they engage each other in friendly competition. Paul Cobban, Chief Data and Transformation Officer at DBS, said, "As a technology company that provides banking services, we are keenly aware of the need to stay ahead of the technology curve to continue exceeding our customers' expectations. We have never believed in limiting digital expertise to a small team. Instead, we passionately believe in democratising technology skillsets among all employees, so that they can run alongside the company as we advance on our digital transformation together. Additionally, we wanted to adopt a different approach from our previous digital and data skills revolutions. In line with our ethos of keeping work and learning fun, we sought to introduce gamification elements to better engage our employees, and the AWS DeepRacer League platform presented the perfect opportunity."

DBS is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to equip at least 3,000 of the bank's employees - including senior leadership - with new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) skills by the end of this year, through gamified learning. This is meant to accelerate the use of AI and ML across its business, the bank said in a press statement on Monday. Both companies jointly launched the DBS x AWS DeepRacer League, which will enable DBS employees to learn the basics of AI and ML through a series of hands-on online tutorials. They will then put their new knowledge to the test by programming their own autonomous model race car. These ML models will be uploaded onto a virtual racing environment where the employees can experiment and iteratively finetune their models as they engage each other in friendly competition.

I first wrote about AWS DeepRacer at this time last year, and described it as an opportunity for you to get some hands-on experience with Reinforcement Learning (RL). Along with the rest of the AWS team, I believe that you should always be improving your existing skills and building new ones. We launched the AWS DeepRacer car and the AWS DeepRacer League so that you could have the opportunity to get experience and new skills in a fun, competitive environment. In less than a year, tens of thousands of developers have participated in hands-on and virtual races located all over the world. Their enthusiasm and energy have been inspiring, as has been the creativity.