Many companies rely on cloud providers for the backend functions that support their businesses, such as virtual server space, storage or developer tools. Ivan Pantic/E+/Getty Images New York —

Monday’s Amazon Web Services outage — and the global disruption it caused — underscored just how reliant the internet has become on a small number of core infrastructure providers.

The ramifications of such outages could only get worse if artificial intelligence becomes as central to work and daily life as tech giants suggest it will in the coming years.

Monday’s outage briefly blocked some people from scheduling doctor’s appointments and accessing banking services. But what if an outage took down the AI tools that doctors were using to help diagnose patients, or that companies used to help

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