"Amazon CEO Andy Jassy dropped an AI bombshell on employees today, announcing that Rohit Prasad-who has led Amazon's so-called AGI (artificial general intelligence) team since 2023, overseeing the development of the company's Nova models-will depart at the end of the year. Prasad previously served as the head scientist behind Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, a role he held from the product's earliest days."
"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's frontier model research team. Abbeel 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."
Rohit Prasad will depart Amazon at the end of the year. Prasad led Amazon's AGI team since 2023 and oversaw development of the Nova models. Prasad previously served as the head scientist behind the Alexa voice assistant from the product's earliest days. Peter DeSantis will lead a new organization responsible for developing AI models, custom computer chips (Graviton, Trainium, Nitro) and quantum computing, and will report directly to Andy Jassy. Nova 2 models launched at re:Invent and Amazon's custom silicon efforts are expanding. Pieter Abbeel will lead the frontier model research team after joining Amazon in 2024 via a deal with Covariant that included licensing adaptive-robot AI models.
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