To address AI competition pressure, Amazon appoints a new AI executive and integrates AGI, chip, and quantum computing departments.
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Amazon announced on Wednesday a reorganization of its artificial intelligence (AI) project-related teams, appointing a senior executive from its cloud computing division to lead a newly established business unit.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced Wednesday that Peter DeSantis will lead this new team. The new organizational structure will integrate Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team—which is responsible for the company’s Nova brand AI model as well as the “digital brain” behind the voice assistant Alexa—along with Amazon’s semiconductor manufacturing division and quantum computing research operations.
According to media reports, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s largest provider of computing power and data storage leasing services, but in the field of AI developers, AWS has not replicated its dominance of the cloud computing market and is facing fierce competition from Microsoft, Google, and numerous startups.
Reportedly, in the months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022, Amazon consolidated previously scattered AI development efforts that were split between the Alexa team and AWS, unifying them under one organization. This adjustment shows that Amazon hopes to build a cutting-edge, general-purpose AI tool similar to ChatGPT.
The latest adjustment announced Wednesday further strengthens the team by incorporating Annapurna Labs. This is a startup Amazon acquired in 2015, which is also the foundation for Amazon’s development of general-purpose chips and AI hardware.
Jassy stated:
"I believe a number of our new technologies are at a critical inflection point, and these technologies will, to a large extent, shape customer experience in the future."
Previously, DeSantis served as Senior Vice President of core cloud computing operations, responsible for most AWS engineering teams. In his new position, he will report directly to Jassy. Jassy said DeSantis has a strong track record in “solving problems at the edge of technological feasibility.”
Jassy also said that the current head of the AGI team, and longtime leader of the Alexa Voice Science team, Rohit Prasad, will leave Amazon at the end of this year.
In addition, Pieter Abbeel will lead the foundational AI model development team at Amazon. Abbeel joined Amazon last year when Amazon acquired the robotics software company Covariant.
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