If corporate boards are signaling something about what a company wants to focus on, Amazon just made an interesting move to change its direction. The company just announced that Andrew Ng – a prominent figure in the world of AI and particularly in building AI in large technology companies – is joining its board. The company also announced, with slightly less fanfare, that Judy McGrath — best known for her work as a longtime TV executive, running MTV and helping Viacom become a leading media company — will step down as director.
Taken together, the two moves paint an interesting picture of the tech giant.
After many costly years in which Amazon wanted to focus entirely on building an entertainment empire – Amazon spent almost $ 19 billion on its video and music businesses in 2023 – it is interesting that someone who is a major supporter and would have been an advisor to this strategy, I will not be running for re-election.
To be clear: This is certainly the case not A sign that Amazon will continue to not be a major force in streaming entertainment, be it video or music or games or anything else. Now advertising will be hidden on Prime Video, an important reason to strengthen viewership. However, it will be interesting to see the overall impact of investments in this segment in 2024. Layoffs in the studio and video divisions and the reduction of operations in some regions are two signs that it could be smaller. And given the AI whiplash every major tech company is currently feeling, it seems a timely detail that McGrath is now stepping down from the board.
Looking ahead, overall, to remain at the forefront of the technology industry, Amazon will seek better thought leadership on the next steps of its artificial intelligence strategy.
It is worth remembering that Amazon is and has long been a leading player in AI. Its Alexa assistant and Echo devices have popularized voice recognition and connected assistants and spurred many copycat products from competitors; It has been working on autonomous services for air and ground delivery and in-store shopping. it uses machine learning to improve product targeting; AWS is a big player in AI computing. more recently, billions have been poured into investments in major AI startups; and so forth.
But for at least a year, in the wake of OpenAI’s GPT advances and Microsoft’s huge investment in that startup (and the massive fallout from a host of other tech companies that followed), Amazon has struggled internally and externally with the perception that If this is the case, it “lags behind technologically”.
Is it true? Is it just the optics? Regardless of what the actual answer is, Ng’s appointment can only help develop his AI profile and give him greater thought leadership in real innovation, and not just follow-up in the field.
Ng may be a triple-threat-style executive with experience in science, investment and hands-on construction, typically holding roles in all three areas simultaneously. His current roles include an adjunct professorship at Stanford University; a role as General Partner at AI Fund, a venture studio that builds and supports AI startups; the head of edtech company DeepLearning.AI And the founder of Landing AI, a computer vision startup. Oh, and he’s also still chairman of Coursera, another edtech startup he founded and runs.
He was also previously chief scientist and vice president at Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant. and he founded and ran Google Brain, which was The The search giant’s first major foray into developing and applying AI technology in its products.
Amazon did not provide a statement from Ng himself in its announcement. We reached out to him directly to ask if he could tell us a little more about what he believes is Amazon’s big opportunity, and we’ll update as soon as we hear back. At the moment it absolutely feels like a new wave of companies and thinkers are setting the pace in AI, but the Amazons of the world are certainly not standing idly by.