Amazon's AGI Ambitions Face Setback as Key VP Departs

Amazon loses VP helping lead development of artificial general intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 26 (Reuters) - An Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab vice president helping to oversee one of the company's highest profile projects, artificial general intelligence, is stepping down on Friday, the online retailer confirmed after a Reuters inquiry. Karthik Ramakrishnan, a 13-year veteran of Amazon, is stepping down, according to internal communications reviewed by Reuters. It could not be learned if he had another job lined up and Ramakrishnan did not respond to a request for comment. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is technology being developed that researchers believe could one day equal or even outperform human-level intelligence. AGI, if perfected, could help to further automate work done today by humans, potentially upending fields as diverse as warfare, healthcare and stock trading. Ramakrishnan worked on the first iteration of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and the associated Echo devices. He began his career at Netscape before moving to Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, according to his LinkedIn profile. His departure is among several higher profile ones in recent months, including Vasi Philomin, a vice president guiding generative AI development; and Jon Jones, who led the AWS global startups and venture capital business. Amazon is working to bolster its reputation for developing AI software and services as rivals like OpenAI and Google have captured market share. It has invested around $8 billion in startup Anthropic and uses its Claude AI model in products like Alexa and an internal chatbot known as Cedric. On Thursday at an internal all-hands meeting, AWS chief Matt Garman pressed employees to meet timelines for releasing products, saying Amazon can "lose some of that buzz" when customers have to wait to try out new services, Reuters reported. Reporting by Greg Bensinger; Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Media & Telecom Greg Bensinger Thomson Reuters Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focusing on the world's largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

Amazon loses VP helping lead development of artificial general intelligence

Ramakrishnan worked on the first iteration of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and the associated Echo devices. He began his career at Netscape before moving to Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile. An Amazon vice president helping to oversee one of the company's highest profile projects, artificial general intelligence, is stepping down on Friday, the online retailer confirmed after a Reuters inquiry. Karthik Ramakrishnan, a 13-year veteran of Amazon, is stepping down, according to internal communications reviewed by Reuters. It could not be learned if he had another job lined up and Ramakrishnan did not respond to a request for comment. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is technology being developed that researchers believe could one day equal or even outperform human-level intelligence. AGI, if perfected, could help to further automate work done today by humans, potentially upending fields as diverse as warfare, healthcare and stock trading. Ramakrishnan worked on the first iteration of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and the associated Echo devices. He began his career at Netscape before moving to Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile. His departure is among several higher profile ones in recent months, including Vasi Philomin, a vice president guiding generative AI development; and Jon Jones, who led the AWS global startups and venture capital business. Amazon is working to bolster its reputation for developing AI software and services as rivals like OpenAI and Google have captured market share. It has invested around $8 billion in startup Anthropic and uses its Claude AI model in products like Alexa and an internal chatbot known as Cedric. On Thursday at an internal all-hands meeting, AWS chief Matt Garman pressed employees to meet timelines for releasing products, saying Amazon can "lose some of that buzz" when customers have to wait to try out new services, Reuters reported.

Amazon Artificial General Intelligence VP Departs: Report

Karthik Ramakrishnan was with Amazon for about 14 years and worked on Alexa products during his tenure. An executive working on artificial general intelligence at Amazon has reportedly left the technology giant. Karthik Ramakrishnan, vice president of AGI-a term usually applied to AI that can understand, learn and apply intelligence to a human-like degree-has been with Amazon for about 14 years, according to his LinkedIn account. Reuters reported Friday that the VP was leaving the same day. While the largest technology companies are always jockeying for top talent, the battle has reached a new level in the era of artificial intelligence. Facebook parent Meta offered $200 million over several years to hire Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple's AI models team, according to a Bloomberg article from July. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during an appearance on his brother's podcast this summer that Meta has tried to hire away a variety of his employees with signing bonuses as high as $100 million. [RELATED: AWS Hires Two Vice Presidents To Drive Agentic AI For Agentcore And Kiro] Amazon VP Leaves CRN has reached out to Amazon and Ramakrishnan for comment. Amazon has seen engineers in charge of solutions like Amazon Q, OpenSearch Serverless and Amazon Web Services Glue leave the company in recent months, as well as an executive in charge of AWS' Generative AI group and an executive in charge of global data centers. But the vendor-which has about 130,000 partners worldwide-has also seen some major executive pick-ups as well, including new VPs to help drive the $124 billion company's agentic AI business, specifically around AgentCore and AWS Kiro. It was not immediately clear what Ramakrishnan will do next. He joined Amazon in 2012 and helped develop virtual assistant Alexa and the Echo suite of products, according to his LinkedIn profile. He led the creation of Alexa's speech recognition, language understanding and other parts of the device's software stack. His resume includes about three years with Microsoft, leaving in 2010 as a senior platform engineer. He joined Microsoft through the acquisition of Tellme Networks in 2007.