The mantra "work differently" echoed through AWS Summit 2025 in New York City as Deepak Singh, VP of developer agents and experiences at AWS, laid out a transformative vision for agentic artificial intelligence. In an exclusive interview with ZDNET's Sabrina Ortiz, Singh dismissed narrow views of AI as mere efficiency tools, instead positioning agents as catalysts for unprecedented human effectiveness.

"People get too hung up on automation and efficiency," Singh stated. "We are working differently, but the way we are working different is making us more effective because [agents are] solving harder problems or more problems than you could do before."

This philosophy underpinned major AWS announcements, including Amazon Bedrock AgentCore—an enterprise-grade platform streamlining agent implementation—and a new AWS Marketplace hub featuring pre-built agents from Anthropic, IBM, Perplexity, Salesforce, and others. These offerings aim to accelerate organizational adoption by simplifying deployment and customization.

Augmenting Human Potential, Not Replacing It

Singh challenged prevailing narratives about AI displacing entry-level roles, arguing instead for augmentation. He described scenarios where software developer interns leverage agents to grasp system architecture faster without intensive language syntax study, fundamentally changing learning curves.

"On an individual level, you want to figure out: Is what I'm doing higher quality? Am I able to do more things? Am I able to take on more because I have the capacity? If you don't work differently, you're not going to get that benefit," Singh emphasized.

Illustrating this shift, he cited an internal case where a developer using Kiro—AWS's newly launched agentic IDE—delivered a feature in one day instead of an estimated week. AWS's accompanying blog post identified five high-growth roles being reshaped by agentic collaboration: software development, data analysis, cloud engineering, cybersecurity, and data engineering.

The Internet-Scale Shift

Singh's boldest proclamation framed agentic AI as a societal inflection point comparable to the internet's emergence. Unlike standalone chatbots, these persistent, goal-oriented systems promise continuous interaction with digital ecosystems, automating complex workflows while humans focus on higher-order strategy.

"The future of how applications run and how we as people interact with the world around us is going to be through agents," Singh declared. "Agentic AI is going to be a change for society and business that is as important as the internet." As enterprises gain access to AWS's streamlined tooling, this vision inches closer to reality—reshaping not just productivity, but the very architecture of professional problem-solving.

Source: Interview with Deepak Singh conducted by Sabrina Ortiz at AWS Summit 2025, July 17, 2025. Original reporting by ZDNET.