Amazon has a new leader for its ‘AGI’ group as it plays catch-up on AI

Amazon’s caput of artificial wide intelligence (AGI), Rohit Prasad, is leaving the institution adjacent twelvemonth arsenic it reaches an “inflection point” successful its improvement of the technology, CEO Andy Jassy announced connected Wednesday. As portion of the change, Peter DeSantis, a elder vice president astatine Amazon Web Services, will helm a caller section focused connected the company’s astir precocious AI models, spot development, and quantum computing.

Prasad joined Amazon successful 2013 and played a cardinal domiciled successful the improvement of the company’s sound adjunct Alexa. He besides oversaw the motorboat of the Amazon Nova AI models and later became the caput of the AGI squad successful 2023. While the different AI giants tout their capacity connected various AI benchmarks, Prasad recently emphasized successful an interview pinch Verge alum and Sources laminitis Alex Heath that “None of these benchmarks are real… The evals are frankly getting noisy, and they’re not showing the existent powerfulness of these models.” The Nova 2 AI exemplary family launched earlier this period and trails the title connected immoderate of those leaderboards.

Over the past mates of years, the cognition is that Amazon has struggled to support up pinch the likes of Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Meanwhile, Alexa’s promised AI-powered overhaul was beset by delays and still isn’t performing arsenic expected.

Now, DeSantis, who has spent the past 3 decades astatine Amazon, will caput up a much expansive team, while AI interrogator Pieter Abbeel will lead Amazon’s frontier exemplary investigation team. “The way up is afloat of opportunity,” Jassy writes. “With the instauration that’s been built, the traction we’re seeing, and Peter’s activity bringing unified attraction to these technologies, we’re well-positioned to lead and present meaningful capabilities for our customers.”