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If the decisions made by corporate board of directors can indicate where a company wants to be concentre , Amazon ’s board just made an interesting move . The companyannouncedon Thursday that Andrew Ng , experience for build AI at large technical school companionship , is joining its control board of directors . The company also said that Judy McGrath — intimately known for her work as a foresighted - time TV administrator , run MTV and helping Viacom become a media powerhouse — will be tread down as a director .
contain together , the two move adumbrate out an interesting photo of the technical school giant ’s intentions .
After many dearly-won years of going all out on work up an entertainment imperium ( Amazon spentalmost $ 19 billionon its television and music business concern in 2023 ) , it ’s interesting to see that McGrath , who would have been an important advocate and consultant on that strategy , is not go to bear for reelection .
That ’s not at all to say that Amazon will cease to be a huge force in streaming entertainment , be it video , music , gaming or anything else . The party isnow folding in advertising across Prime Video , which is one grownup reason it may require to keep its audience happy and coming back .
Still , it will be interesting to see how investments dally out in that section in 2024 . The society haslaid off one C of employeesin its studio apartment and TV divisions , and it has also beenwinding downPrime Video in some regions , which may indicate that the concern could be smaller , or at least more focused , go forward . And give the AI whiplash that every Big Tech company is presently dealing with , it palpate timely that McGrath is ill-use away from the board now .
On that note , to stay at the cutting edge of tech , Amazon will be look for well think leadership on the next steps in its unreal intelligence strategy .
It ’s worth remember that Amazon has been a leading player in AI for a retentive time . Its Alexa helper and Echo devices helped put voice recognition and connected assistants on the mathematical function ; the ship’s company has been working on autonomous service , for in airborne and ground - level delivery as well as in - store buying ; it uses political machine learning to improve how products are targeted ; AWS is a big role player in AI compute ; and now it is pouringbillionsinto investment in big AI startups .
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Yet , for at least a class , in the wake of OpenAI ’s GPT advance , Amazon has grapple with the impressioninternallyandexternallythat it is “ falling behind ” on the applied science .
Is it true ? Is it just optics ? no matter of the response , Ng ’s naming can only be helpful for advancing Amazon ’s visibility in the realm of AI . Put simply , the companionship wants , and believes it needs , to make real innovation in the outer space . Andy Jassy , in Amazon’sannual letter to shareholder , published presently after the Ng announcement , went so far as to call GenAI Amazon ’s fourth “ column ” ( alongside Marketplace , Prime and AWS ) in terms of future focus . That requires serious , high - level counseling on how to make more than just follow - on movement .
Ng is potentially a triple - threat board date : He has experience in academia , investment , and custody - on building , and he has usually handle all three roles simultaneously . He is presently an adjuvant professor at Stanford ; a general partner at a speculation studio apartment call AI Fund ; and he heads edtech caller DeepLearning . AIandis the laminitis of computer vision startup Landing AI . Oh , and he ’s also chair of Coursera , another edtech startup he launch and used to direct .
Ng has also answer as the chief scientist and VP at Chinese search hulk Baidu ; and he found and led Google Brain , which wasthatsearch behemoth ’s first bad raid into building and apply AI tech across its merchandise .
Amazon did not ply any statement from Ng in its declaration . We have reached out to him directly , and we ’ll update when and if we learn back .
It may experience like a new wave of ship’s company and thinkers are put the yard in AI , but the Amazons of the worldly concern are certainly not fend by idly .
