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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy dropped an AI bombshell on employees today, announcing that Rohit Prasad\u2014who has led Amazon\u2019s so-called AGI (artificial general intelligence) team since 2023, overseeing the development of the company\u2019s Nova models\u2014will depart at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Prasad previously served as the head scientist behind Amazon\u2019s Alexa voice assistant, a role he held from the product\u2019s earliest days. When he was appointed to lead the new ambitious AGI effort after ChatGPT launched in November 2022, as part of a scramble to develop a competitive LLM that could help reinvigorate the Alexa voice assistant. it was led almost entirely by ex-Alexa executives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a blog post, Jassy announced that longtime Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Peter DeSantis will lead a new organization that drives the development of its AI models, custom computer chips (which include its Graviton, Trainium and Nitro chips), and quantum computing efforts. DeSantis had overseen the many teams designing AWS\u2019 global infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith our Nova 2 models just launched at re:Invent, our custom silicon growing rapidly, and the advantages of optimizing across models, chips, and cloud software and infrastructure, we wanted to free Peter up to focus his energy, invention cycles, and leadership on these new areas,\u201d Jassy wrote, adding that DeSantis would report directly to him.<\/p>\n
Jassy also said that as part of the organizational change, Pieter Abbeel, an Amazon Distinguished Scientist in robotics who is also an AI and robotics professor at UC Berkeley, will lead the company\u2019s frontier model research team.\u00a0Abbeel came to Amazon in 2024 along with other cofounders of his robotics startup Covariant, in a deal that also saw Amazon licensing Covariants software, which included AI models that gave robots the ability to quickly adapt to new environments and tasks.<\/p>\n
\u201cPieter is one of the world\u2019s leading AI researchers, and co-founder of Covariant, which pioneered the first commercial foundation model for robotics,\u201d Jassy wrote. \u201cHis deep expertise in generative AI and reinforcement learning makes him well-suited to advance Amazon\u2019s AI research as we push the boundaries of what\u2019s possible for customers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The news of Prasad\u2019s departure comes as somewhat of a surprise, given that he was recently at Amazon\u2019s Re:Invent conference discussing the latest Nova models. However, over the past two years there has been significant media coverage suggesting that Amazon\u2019s Alexa AI and AGI-related efforts have struggled and fallen behind competitors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A year ago, for example, Fortune\u2019s Jason Del Rey reported exclusively that leaked Amazon documents identified critical flaws in the delayed AI reboot of Alexa. And in June 2024, Fortune reported that Amazon\u2019s had blown Alexa\u2019s shot to dominate AI, according to more than a dozen employees who worked on it\u2014partly due to a lack of adequate data, even though Prasad, pushed the AGI team to work harder and harder, with a message to \u201cget some magic\u201d out of the LLM.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition, last week\u2019s Amazon layoffs fueled concerns about whether Amazon\u2019s was still lagging behind in AI, and whether the cuts reflected slowing growth. That came on the heels of comments in October by analyst Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, who said Amazon\u2019s AWS was in \u201clast place\u201d in the AI cloud race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, The Information as well as Bloomberg reported this week that Amazon was in talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI, in turn, had agreed to use Amazon\u2019s Tranium AI chips, perhaps helping to counter the narrative that the company is behind in AI. OpenAI had previously agreed to spend $38 billion using AWS for computing.<\/p>\n
Amazon also has a deal with AI company Anthropic, in which Amazon has invested $8 billion. Anthropic has agreed to use AWS\u2019s Trainium chips for training and Anthropic\u2019s Claude model is being used to answer some queries in the new Alexa Plus. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Amazon #CEO #Andy #Jassy #announces #departure #executive #Rohit #Prasad #leadership #shakeup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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