522: Replace Heroics Not Humans, with Amazon Web Services
Tariq Choudry is a technology and supply chain executive at Amazon Web Services, where he leads customer success for applied AI solutions. With over 20 years of experience, his focus is on creating autonomous supply chains that turn complexity into a competitive advantage. Choudry advocates for using AI to replace fragile, human-dependent "heroics" with scalable, predictable systems, allowing planners to focus on strategy. He argues that trust in AI is built on predictability rather than perfection and believes that successful AI adoption requires addressing deep-seated organizational culture and incentives, not just implementing new technology.
Today I’m joined by Amazon Web Services, an industry mega-brand that provides a reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world.
Amazon Web Services is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers, including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies, use AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.
Today Tariq Choudry, Head of Customer Success of Applied AI Solutions in Supply Chain at Amazon Web Services, joins me to talk all about how agentic AI is actually going to be used in supply chain. We’ll be diving into why AI pilots still fail, and incorporating new capabilities into existing workflows. We’ll be sharing why cyber risk is now a supply chain problem, and choosing decisions over dashboards. And we’ll be explaining why AI will replace heroics, not humans.
Guest bio:
Tariq is a technology and supply chain executive with over 20 years of experience transforming how organizations operate through AI and intelligent automation. His passion lies in building supply chains that don’t just react to problems—they anticipate them, adapt autonomously, and turn complexity into competitive advantage. Throughout Tariq’s career, he has specialized in bridging the gap between cutting-edge technologies like Agentic AI, cloud-native architectures, and decision intelligence with real-world business strategy. He believes the future belongs to organizations that embed AI at the core of their operations, creating systems that can act independently while elevating human talent to focus on strategic innovation and creative problem-solving. Tariq is driven by helping companies build resilient, scalable, and future-ready supply chains, and he has spent two decades proving that when you combine advanced technology with practical business sense, you can turn operational chaos into a strategic advantage. Tariq’s approach is simple: empower systems to handle the predictable, so people can focus on the exceptional.
An introduction to Tariq, his background, and role at AWS.
Why AI will replace heroics, not humans.
Why so many AI pilots still fail, what’s going wrong with both technology and people, and the big problem with incentive and blame culture.
How businesses can incorporate new capabilities and integrate them into their existing systems and workflows, and use agentic AI to surface the need for critical decisions earlier when there’s more time and optionality.
From dashboards and Excel to tribal knowledge in our workflows, how AI is exposing organizational debt, and what that means for teams.
What all of this means for planners.
Why cyber risk is now a supply chain problem, and how AI can helps teams navigate it.
Why people want AI but don’t trust it, and why trust is built from predictability.
Tariq’s advice for how businesses can build trust in AI, prove predictability, and scale with confidence.
Resources & Links Mentioned
- Head over to Amazon Web Service’s website now to find out more and discover how they could help you too. You can also connect with AWS and keep up to date with the latest over on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or X (Twitter), or you can connect with Tariq on LinkedIn.
- If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more from Amazon Web Services, check out 489: Time To Swap Your Axe For A Chainsaw: The Power of Agentic AI or 519: Overcoming The Perfect Storm: Moving Beyond Basic Automation To Realize AI’s Full Potential.
- Check out our other podcasts HERE.
